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Article:
The Vanishing Image: XHTML 2 Migration Issues
Subject: Use of Conditional Comments
Date: 2003-07-04 03:17:18
From: Florian Bauer
Response to: Use of Conditional Comments
You can embed the conditional comments like this:
<!-- [if !IE] -->
<object></object>
<!-- <![endif] -->

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  • Use of Conditional Comments
    2003-07-04 07:46:18 MikeyC Cacciottolo [Reply]

    "You can embed the conditional comments like this:
    <!-- [if !IE] -->
    <object></object>
    <!-- <![endif] -->"


    Your example doesn't work. You can't use conditional comments in that manner.


    • Use of Conditional Comments
      2003-07-04 14:37:27 Florian Bauer [Reply]

      I double-checked my example. It does indeed work, at least with the german version of IE 6. I have no idea whether this hack will work with any other version of IE. What version of IE did you use for testing?

      • Use of Conditional Comments
        2003-07-04 20:50:34 MikeyC Cacciottolo [Reply]

        IE6 sp1 - english running on Windows NT &
        IE6 sp1 - english running on Windows XP


        Here is the exact example I used (and I just double-checked it):


        <!-- [if !IE] -->
        i can see this in Internet Explorer
        <!-- <![endif] -->


        • Use of Conditional Comments
          2003-07-05 04:38:08 Florian Bauer [Reply]

          That is strange:
          Here is my example:


          <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
          <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="de" lang="de">
          <head>
          </head>
          <body>


          <!--[if !IE]> -->
          IE doesn't see this.
          <!-- <![endif] -->


          </body>
          </html>


          I checked this with ie6 on winxp, and ie5.5 on win98, both in the german version.
          I also tried your example and the conditional comments do also work there.
          strange...
          cheers
          Florian

          • Use of Conditional Comments
            2003-07-06 16:17:35 MikeyC Cacciottolo [Reply]

            I just realized something else. The example we've been playing with thus far uses a transitional doctype as it doesn't validate using a strict doctype. Something about character data not being allowed there according to the validator.


            XHTML 2 won't have a transitional mode (as far as I'm aware), so it seems that you can't use conditional comments anyways to deal with IE's broken Object support.


            Please correct me if I'm wrong.

            • Re: Use of Conditional Comments
              2003-10-16 18:09:25 Lenny D [Reply]

              "I just realized something else. The example we've been playing with thus far uses a transitional doctype as it doesn't validate using a strict doctype. Something about character data not being allowed there according to the validator."


              XHTML does not allow character data at the <body> level. It must be within a block level element such as

              .



          • Use of Conditional Comments
            2003-07-05 11:25:34 MikeyC Cacciottolo [Reply]

            I've isolated the problem. Your original example was:
            <!-- [if !IE] -->
            <object></object>
            <!-- <![endif] -->


            Your follow-up example was (notice there is no space before the opening bracket of the if statement):


            <!--[if !IE] -->
            <object></object>
            <!-- <![endif] -->


            Your second example is indeed correct. Why do trhings have to be so confusing ;)

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