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diff --git a/src/assets/blog/2024-09-25.md b/src/assets/blog/2024-09-25.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..da6ff9c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/assets/blog/2024-09-25.md @@ -0,0 +1,241 @@ +--- +name: IE6 +date: 2024-09-25T09:28:35-04:00 +desc: Why must i make myself suffer... +--- + +For a while now I have been in the rabbit hole of downloading old browsers and +seeing what features they no longer support. Some bowsers dont support fonts, +some dont support styling, and one of them called IE6 is the worst of them all! + +I am not sure what made me decide that making my website work on old browsers +was a good idea, but over the past few months, i've been slowly improving +my websites compatibility. Now I can fully say my website works all the way +back to IE6. + +### Timescale + +Not only is IE6 hard to support, it is really old (compared to today). IE6 +was released on August 24, 2001, which was almost 23 years ago. Thats older +than me! When this browser was created I wasn't even born, yet people from that +time could go to my website, and it would work. + +> Why not support an older browser? + +Well as much as I hate myself, I don't hate myself that much... for now. The +main reason to stop at IE6 is the website, [caniuse.com](https://caniuse.com), +does not collect data before IE6. So it would be really hard to try to figure +out what css is suppored before then. Also IE6 used to be a standard basis for +many real websites to support, which means there are a lot of chat logs, +posts, and whatnot explaning how to get things working. All of this I cannot +say the same for IE5, or even Netscape. + +### How i did it + +Now into how I got this working. Well it was a lot of things. Quite a lot did +not work at all. When I first tried rendering my website in IE6, it looked like +this:  +... not great. There is no background, fonts, colors are wrong. Acually there +are NO style sheets loading at all! What you are looking at is just html and +nothing else! + +### Firefox First + +To tackle this I decided to fix things in stages and try to get old firefox +working first. And to start I decided to pick Firefox 10, released in 2012. +And this was a much better starting point since the website was still broken, +but some styling was still working:  + +The background seemed to work, and images were loading, but fonts, font colors, +and just the entire layout was broken. + +#### -moz + +It turnes out that a lot of older browsers to support alot of the features I +use, but they are not accessable though the normal css tag. Instead you have +to apply the vendor prefix, and for firefox its -moz. + +#### scss + +Now since I wanted to support multiple older browsers, I would need multiple +vendor prefixes. And these prefixes would need to be duplicated for every +single css style that needs them (a lot). So I switched to using scss, due to +its feature called mixins. This would allow me to create a mixin that could +take the normal arguments of any style, and output all of the vendor prefixes. +For eamaple: + +```scss +@mixin linear-gradient($values...) { + background: -webkit-linear-gradient($values); + background: -moz-linear-gradient($values); + background: linear-gradient($values); +} +``` + +Now i only have to type `@linear-gradient(...)` and it will compile down to +all the vendor prefixes! + +#### what broke + +> So what was broken? + +Well quite a lot broke. In no particular order, the following css styles needed +vendor prefixes: + +- display +- flex-direction +- justify-content +- align-items +- linear-gradient +- fit-content +- keyframes + +Now some of you may see flex box styles in there and think: + +> Wait IE6 doesnt support Flex?! + +..and you would be correct. As I started getting FF3.5, then FF2 to work. Even +more things broke. But as soon as I made the jump to suppot IE9, all hell broke +loose. + +### the layout + +Now some people might know why supporting old IE sucks, and my biggest reason +is that getting your layout working is awful. There is no flex box. There is +no css grid. You only have tables. + +Now writing out <table\> all over my source code would not be fun. It would +be harder to work with, and would also just look bad. So thank god for the +css style `display: table`. With this style, you can mimmic your website +using bunch of tables, and can get different blocks to flow correctly. + +The only issue is that display table isnt great for horozontal lists. Such as +the links in my nav bar. They were vertical and not across. To fix this I also +pulled an old IE trick and turned it into a list (<ul\>), and made each of the +<li\> elements `display: inline-block`, so that they would not wrap. + +Horray now my website works. Lets see how it looks in IE6... + + +... dear god why is nothing working?!?! + +### IE6 + +#### URIs + +For some reason IE6 does not like to load relative paths. It does not support +them. At all. If i had a link starting with / to load a css file, it would not +load it. All of my links to go to other pages were also broken. IE6 requires +a `http://` in front of any uri. So now I had to create a function that +generates the first half of the url `http://<host>:<port><base>`, and I could +then apply that to every URL. + +#### Fonts + +Another things that IE6 doesnt support is fonts... kinda. It does not support +TTF, OTF, WOFF, WOFF2, or any font format besides one called embedded opentype +i.e. .eot. So all I had to do to fix that was generate eot font files from my +ttf ones, and add those in. Now my font-family mixin looks like this: + +```scss +@mixin font-face($name) { + @font-face { + font-family: $name; + src: url("../font/" + $name + ".eot"); + src: url("../font/" + $name + ".eot?#iefix") format("embedded-opentype"), + url("../font/" + $name + ".woff2") format("woff2"), + url("../font/" + $name + ".woff") format("woff"), + url("../font/" + $name + ".ttf") format("truetype"), + url("../font/" + $name + ".otf") format("opentype"), + url("../font/" + $name + ".svg#" + $name) format('svg'); + font-weight: normal; + font-style: normal; + font-display: swap; + } +} + +``` + +#### How is it now? + + + +Well it mostly works, but the layout is still kinda broken, and there +are box sizing issues. + +#### Layout + +Well remember how i started using `display: table`. Well IE6 and IE7 do not +support it. Now like i said earlier I didnt want to go putting tables around +in my html. So I decided to compromise. When viewing from IE6 and IE7, I +only show one column instead of the normal two for my website. Along with a +few extra padding fixes my layout was fixed. + +#### Box sizing + +CSS has a property called `box-sizing`, which defines how the width and height of +an element should be caculated. By default `content-box` says to not include +border and padding in the calculations, while `border-box` does include them. + +So in the above image, the reason the header is bulging is because its given +a set height, then after that its adding the padding. This breaks it since i +want some padding and the header to stay the height i tell it. + +The issue is that IE6 and IE7 do not support box-sizing. Thankfully there is a +pollyfill for it! + +> Wait... what is a pollyfill? + +Well a pollyfill is a set of javascript that can add support for newer features +in older browsers. Normally they are used to add more modern JS standard library +functions, but they can also be used to fix css. + +I found this [github repo](https://github.com/Schepp/box-sizing-polyfill) that +contains a polyfill, but wait. What the heck is a htc file? + +#### IE6 HTML Components + +Turns out Microsoft struck again and implemented a non web standard feature in +their browser, because .htc files are not at all supported in any other browser. +Well it turns out that .htc files are just java script that runs on a per html +element. It provides the `element` variable that the script can use to access +the current element its being run on. So if I applied it to my entire page, +it would run the javascript code for every single element on my page. To enable +a htc file you got to use the `behavior` css property. + +```scss +#header, #footer { + behavior: url(boxsizing.htc); +} +``` + +Now this polyfill can be used to recaculate the width and height of the header +and footer elements! + +### IE6 Works + +And now everything works: +; + +### Conclusion + +I do not know what made me want to do this, but i did it. It works. Yay! +Oh and for the love for god do not do this yourself (unless you hate yourself). + +Also, a final list of every css style that does not work in IE6 (that i used +to use)... + +- flex boxes and +- display table +- gradients +- margin:auto (in some cases) +- most fonts (besides eot) +- css animations +- css variables +- border radius +- fit content +- html elments: + - header + - footer + - section + - nav |