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

Tue Sep 29 10:02:23 PDT 2009

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 11:55 AM, Dean Edwards <dean.edwards at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can't get it to work using document.write(). Do you have a live example?

Yup.  http://www.xanthir.com/etc/html5-details-fix.html

(This works in IE8 when the page mode is set to IE7 or Quirks.  It's
possible that this doesn't actually work in a real IE7 or IE6, but I
have no way to test it.)

> And kudos to the guy that discovered this hack. I have no idea how it works
> but it seems to do the trick. Do you have any background to this hack apart
> from what was on the W3C list?

Unfortunately, no.  We do know that actually wrapping a <figure> in an
<object> fixes things, but I have no clue how or why putting an
unclosed <object> in the <head> (which doesn't end up appearing in the
actual DOM) works.

~TJ