[whatwg] The new content model for <details> breaks rendering in MSIE5-7

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 7:23 AM, Jeremy Keith <jeremy at adactio.com> wrote:
> On October 14th, Hixie wrote:
>>
>> As far as I can see the options are as follows:
>>
>> 1. Drop support for <details> and <figure> for now, revisit it later.
>>
>> 2. Use <legend>, and don't expect to be able to use it in any browsers
>>   sanely for a few years.
>>
>> 3. Use <dt>/<dd>, and don't expect to be able to use it in old versions
>>   of IE without rather complicated and elaborate hacks for a few years.
>>
>> 4. Invent a new element with a weird name (since all the good names are
>>   taken already), and don't expect to be able to use it in IE without
>>   hacks for a few years.
>>
>> I am not convinced of the wisdom of #4. I prefer #2 long term, but I see
>> the argument for #3.
>
> It looks like the workaround for #3 isn't quite as arduous as it first
> appeared:
>
> http://blog.jeroenvandergun.nl/7-html5-figure-and-details-do-not-break-in-ie
>
> Wrapping the <details> or <figure> element in a <div> seems to fix IE's
> parsing. It's still not ideal but it's much better than the conditional
> comment <object> hackery.
>
> (and again, this only relates to versions of IE before IE8)
>
> So, on balance, #3 is looking more reasonable than #2 (which fails in a lot
> more browsers).

Yup, the problems with #3 appear to be solved with only a minimum of
hackery (no more than we're already doing to get HTML5 working in
those legacy browsers).

~TJ