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  • The really funky part of the IE6 PNG fix was that the URL of the image in the expression was always relative to the current page URL, not the CSS file that the declaration was in.

    I remember having to use Javascript to generate the image path (I cannot quite remember why absolute or root-relative URLs were not an option for us though...)

    by Cyykratahk
  • Surprised there was no mention of the old system theme colours (that I think still work in some browsers but are long-deprecated):

    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/V...

    I used these CSS styles in the late 90s to make internal browser-based apps for our call centre agents that looked & felt more like native Windows desktop apps.

    by sbarre
  • The funny thing about old IE versions is that they did in fact get one thing right in retrospect; the box model used was a lot more intuitive than the one used by 'default' in standards compliant browsers. Why would border and padding be outside the main element's width? That doesn't match how anyone thinks of a box...

    Either way, the end result was that everyone started using box-sizing: border-box when it was added, and now even the folks at the W3C regret the old box sizing model being used at all.

    Surprised how many of these I didn't remember though. Filters, yes. Syntax hacks to trick IE into using one CSS value while compliant browsers used another, sure. But I don't think I ever came across 'HTML Components' before reading this article.

    by CM30
  • If anything is worthy of the title “load-bearing” it’s IE…

    I wonder how many collective years of developers’ lifespans were dedicated just to addressing its quirks.

    by ryanschaefer
  • I was having a peaceful day until these CSS curiosities brought back memories of my painful days. It's really good that we don't need to deal with such hacks and vendor-specific things anymore. The last time I participated in a project that targeted an old browser was in 2018!
    by meerita
  • I last heavily worked with CSS in 2010/2011. These still don't feel old to me.

    There came a point where if you wrote good HTML/CSS that passed the W3C validator, you were golden on pretty much any device. This still rings true today.

    by VCFundedGenYer
  • Besides vendor tricks, I'd like to see a showcase or article about the evolution of page layout patterns over time. That is, the underlying techniques, not the aesthetics; tables, fixed image sizes, float/clear, flex, etc. I'm finding https://code-literacy.medium.com/css-layout-evolution-detail... but it's quite skeletal and incomplete. Has anyone here come across a more complete write-up?
    by zetanor
  • IE was such a scourge, a drain on humanity (at least the slice of humanity that made websites). One of Microsoft's great evils - they let the product stagnate for years once they had the market cornered.

    Windows has kinda become that now, a low quality user-hostile product forced on people through inertia and monopoly tactics.

    by QuadrupleA

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