Comments on: Transparent PNGs and IE6 standalone

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 17 May 2007 21:30:06 +0000

I saw that at the bottom of the Multiple IE Page that he added AlphaImageLoader a little ways back…

“Updated on 07/11/2006: (IE6) fixed cookies/sessions support+ AlphaImageLoader support”

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Fri, 11 May 2007 12:45:33 +0000

@Stu: Hi Stu, nice to see some celebrities here on my little blog :)

The IE6 Standalone version I’m using (linked to in the first paragraph) has the conditional comments problem solved. I’ve confirmed that it works.

The only two things that annoy me about IE6 standalone right now is the problem above and that you don’t get any print previews from it. Other than that it’s a great tool.

By: Stu

Stu — Fri, 11 May 2007 11:03:37 +0000

I believe that IE6 standalone, on the same PC as IE7, thinks that it is IE7 as far as conditional comments are concerned. So conditional comments targetting IE6 are ignored.

By: Dutch

Dutch — Mon, 07 May 2007 22:21:23 +0000

How familiar this problem. I use PNG in my website and really like the effects. But testing in IE6 gave the problems you describe in this subject. Since fixes are not always valid, I made a separate CSS file for IE 5.5 till IE 6.0 without the PNG effects.

I hope IE 6 (in March 2007 still 38,7% of all used browsers) will update IE 7 (in March 2007 18% of all browsers) very soon or use another kind browser like Firefox (in March 2007 31,8% of all used browsers).

Source statistics:
w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Sat, 05 May 2007 07:45:37 +0000

@Jonas Hallgren: What about doing a writeup on the differences between them yourself? I can publish it here if you want?

@Adam Rissner: Yeah, another computer is always an option, it’s just that you can’t have one computer per browser…

@Smarmy: I’d love too. Don’t be supriced if I do…

@George Morris: A little too promotional, removed url, sorry. What technique did you use?

By: George Morris

George Morris — Sat, 05 May 2007 02:01:35 +0000

We had a hell of a time trying to get transparency to work on our last major project, Oolong Tees.

By: Smarmy

Smarmy — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:10:58 +0000

Emil, I love that you love Fireworks. You should do a write up on FW’s advantages over the other image editors in the market today. No one seems to believe me when I praise its powerful capabilities.

By: Adam Risser

Adam Risser — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:40:43 +0000

Hi Emil,

I was just struggling with transparent PNGs and IE6 stand alone last night. A wasted hour later, I came to the same conclusion as you! I tried the iepngfix.htc and I believe that also did not work in the IE6 standalone, though I may be wrong. In the end, I ended up dragging out an old laptop to use IE6 to solve the problem. Good article!

By: Jonas Hallgren

Jonas Hallgren — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 12:48:29 +0000

Ah, ok, tastes vary, the PNG testing was the only reason I got VPC in the first place and it’s only 2 mousklicks if you have a saved state :) I am currently looking into the differences between bgsleight.js, lepngfix.htc and Michael Lovitt’s opacity script found at http://alistapart.com/stories/pngopacity/

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 09:18:33 +0000

@Jonas Hallgren: I wouldn’t say this minor difference is a reason to go through the hazzle of starting up a virtual machine. I’d rather run it like I run Opera and Firefox on the side.

By: Jonas Hallgren

Jonas Hallgren — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 08:58:33 +0000

I decided to use the Virtual PC Console instead of a standalone IE6, there is even a new updated version of VPC out now. And the latest Win XP SP2 iso is legit until aug 07. Works like a charm. Try it out!

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 01:06:30 +0000

@Terrence Wood: You are restating the article’s conclusion, why?

I’ll have a look at bgsleight, thanks.

By: Terrence Wood

Terrence Wood — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:43:22 +0000

IE has always supported transparency on png-8 and it makes no difference if is installed as a standalone version or not.

I use a variation of bgsleight to manage png-24 , it seems to work with IE standalone, and has the advantage of supporting background-repeat.