CSS1 Support in MSIE for Macintosh

These pages have been superseded by Web Review's Style Sheets Reference Guide. Please go there for support tables and other information. Thank you! This page is currently devoted to listing what isn't recognized by the latest version of Microsoft Ineternet Explorer for the Macintosh. The information on this page is intended as reference material for persons authoring pages with style sheets with the intention of making them viewable in Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.01. This is a working document. Last updated: 31 July 1997 In this document: Latest updates Unsupported properties Discovered inconsistencies Miscellaneous observations Related documents: MSIE (Mac) CSS1 Support Grid -- a large table which lists all of the CSS1 properties and their values, and shows the support status of each (where known) in MSIE. It's also color-coded for easy browsing. CSS1 support in Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 -- delivers the same information for the Win95 version of MSIE3.0; maintained by Braden McDaniel, who thought of it first. CSS support in MS IE 3.0 -- a general information page maintained by Håkon Wium Lie at the W3C CSS1 Support in Macintosh Web Browsers-- the parent of this page CSS draft specifications -- the W3C's main CSS1 page The Cascading Style Sheets, level 1 specification

If you know of portions of the Cascading Style Sheet, level 1, specification which are not supported in the latest publicly released version of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh and which are not listed here, please send e-mail to eam3@po.cwru.edu, preferably with a URL at which the discrepancy can be observed. Similarly, if there are any errors on this page or the Support Grid, let me know.

Latest Updates

[[31 July 97]] MSIE 4.0b1 is out, and sooner than I had expected. Testing will commence shortly...

[[14 May 97]] MSIE 3.01 is out. Its support of CSS1 is, so far as I can tell, in no way different from support in 3.0a. I have updated the Grids anyway, since the version number changed.

[[8 Apr 97]] In the course of talking with sources at Microsoft, I learned that the Macintosh version of MSIE4.0 will be out later this year. I can't be too specific, but I'd say it will be a few months at a minimum... so relax and enjoy the 3.0 series.

[[27 Mar 97]] MSIE 3.0.1b1 is out. It appears to have no CSS1 changes from v3.0a.

[[21 Mar 97]] Contrary to previous statements on this page, MSIE3.0a does support both imported style sheets and images as the backgrounds of elements other then BODY.

[[4 Mar 97]] MSIE 3.0a is out, and has been for at least a little while. With regards to CSS1, it seems to have little or no differences from 3.0, but I am still investigating.

[[7 Jan 97]] Microsoft has released version 3.0 of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh. This is a final release-- not beta-- but still has large gaps in its support for CSS1. Since MSIE 3.0 was well under development previous to the point where CSS1 reached Recommendation status (see below), it is hardly surprising that there are some CSS1 properties which MSIE 3.0 does not support.

[[7 Jan 97]] Margin values are now appropriately inherited. For further information, refer to Microsoft's note describing the fix of this problem in the Win95 version of MSIE (the same information applies to the Mac version now).

[[17 Dec 96]] The CSS1 Specification has reached the status of a W3C Recommendation. This makes it a stable document, and the standard by which implementation will be measured.

This section is organized along the lines of the CSS1 draft specification; the numbers refer to sections of that document. Properties listed in this section are completely unsupported. Therefore, properties which are supported but are in some way broken are not listed in this section.

2.0 Pseudo-Classes and pseudo-elements

• first-line
• first-letter

5.2 Font Properties

• font-family: cursive, fantasy
• font-style: normal, oblique
• font-variant
• font-weight: bolder, 100 - 900
• font-size: <relative-size>
• font: <font-variant>

5.3 Color and Background Properties

• background-color
• background-image
• background-repeat
• background-attachment
• background-position

5.4 Text Properties

• word-spacing
• letter-spacing
• text-decoration: overline
• vertical-align
• text-transform
• text-align: justify

5.5 Box Properties

• word-spacing
• letter-spacing
• text-decoration: overline, blink
• vertical-align
• text-transform
• text-align: justify
• margin-bottom
• padding-top
• padding-right
• padding-bottom
• padding-left
• padding
• border-top-width
• border-right-width
• border-bottom-width
• border-left-width
• border-width
• border-color
• border-style
• border-top
• border-right
• border-bottom
• border-left
• border
• width
• height
• float
• clear

5.6 Classification Properties

• display
• white-space
• list-style-type
• list-style-image
• list-style-position
• list-style

6.0 Units

• 6.3 Color Units: (RRR,GGG,BBB), (R%,G%,B%)

This section describes various bugs in MSIE's support of CSS1. Observations are welcome; please mail them to eam3@po.cwru.edu.

Basic Concepts

• 1.1 Containment in HTML
  • The url(filename) field of the background property breaks the property (i.e., it is not rendered at all) when used in a linked style sheet. There may be other problems specific to linked style sheets; I have not investigated this thoroughly.

CSS1 Properties

• 2.1 anchor [5/28/97]
  • With some properties (like text-decoration) the setting for A:link will carry over to other anchor types. For example:

    A:link {color: blue; text-decoration: underline;}
    A:visited {color: purple; text-decoration: none;}
    

    ...should result in unvisited links being blue and underlined, and visited links purple with no underline. In fact, what happens is that the colors are blue and purple, as specified, but both types of links are underlined. Reversing the text-decoration settings will cause both types of links to have no underline, but still be blue or purple, as appropriate. Note, however, that this effect is not consistent throughout the document-- sometimes a few links will have the correct text-decoration, whereas others of the same type will not.
• 2.3 first-line [5/28/97]
  • Attributes set for the first-line and first-letter pseudo-elements are inappropriately applied to the entire parent element. For example, P:first-line {color: orange;} will turn all paragraph text orange. Whether this is an error in support for these elements, or MSIE is simply ignoring the pseudo-elements, is difficult to ascertain.
• 5.2.2 font-family
  • Font names enclosed in quotes must be followed by a semi-colon, even if the property is the last or only one for the element. If the semi-colon is omitted, subsequent elements in the style sheet will be ignored. If the following code is used, the specified font will be rendered, but the link color will not:
       BODY { font-family: "arial narrow" }
   A:link { color: yellow }
  • In inline styles, font names enclosed in single quotes are unrecognized.
    Ex.: <BODY STYLE="font-family: 'arial narrow'">
  • alternate font lists
    Ex.: font-family: nonexistentfont, arial
• 5.2.6 font-size
  • Numerical increment (and decrement) font sizes yield very strange results. Increments (i.e., +2) do not seem to have any effect. Decrements (i.e., -1) cause the font size to increase dramatically, as if font-size were set to something like +10 or 150 points.
• 5.2.6 font-size: <relative-size> [5/28/97]
  • The <relative-size> element and its values larger and smaller do not seem to be supported.
• 5.3.7 background
  • Backgrounds of elements other than BODY are applied incorrectly. Backgrounds are currently only applied to the text within an element. They are supposed to be applied to the entire element, which includes the entire area within the boundaries defined by the element's margins. This occurs with both solid colors and images.
  • Backgrounds are not always inherited properly. For example, given the styles:

    DIV { background: black }
H1 { color: white }

    ... and the HTML code:

    <DIV>
<H1>peas porage hot</H1>
</DIV>

    The text "peas porage hot" should be white on a black background. It won't be.
• 5.3.7 background: <background-repeat>
  • repeat-x and repeat-y backgrounds which are set to scroll will stop short of the right or bottom margin. In other words, the repeat does not go 'off-screen,' as it does with a normal tiled repeating pattern, but only draws as many instances of the background pattern as will completely fit in the browser window.
  • These properties function properly on the BODY, but do not on block-level elements such as paragraphs.
• 5.3.7 background: <background-attachment>
  • When a background image is set to scroll, it does not cover the entire document, but instead the initial browser window only. The exception is backgrounds set to BODY or HTML, in which case the repeat occurs normally. Whether this is proper behavior is debatable, since wording in the CSS1 specification can be read to support this behavior, or to mean that the background should repeat over the entire document and scroll along with the text when the user moves through the document.
• 5.4.3 text-decoration
  • Combining two or more attributes for this element cause them to cancel each other out.
• 5.4.8 line-height
  • Supports values in some measurements, but not others. Values using unsupported units, including relative values, are interpreted as pixel measurements, or (as in the case of percentage values) are effectively reduced to zero.
  • Negative length values are rendered, rather than ignored; CSS1 does not allow negative values for this property.
• 5.5.01 margin-top
  • The amount of space generated is wildly inaccurate when using "ruler units" (in, cm, mm). My best estimate is that the distance is double what is specified, but this is as yet unconfirmed. This behavior is observed with the margin-top attribute only; margin-right and margin-left seem unaffected by this problem. The incorrect margins generated are consistent with each other (i.e., settings of 1in and 2.54cm will yield the same amount of space).
• 5.5.05 margin
  • When top and bottom margins of two different elements meet, they should "collapse," leaving only the larger of the two values. Instead, both values are applied.
• 6.4 URLs: <url>
  • Full URLs do not work, and long relative URLs don't seem to work either. Short relative URLs (like a filename without any path information) work just fine.
    Ex.: url(http://www.site.net/pix/pic.gif)

• While not explicitly a shortcoming with respect to the CSS1 specification, it is noteworthy that when Internet Explorer encounters values or fields of a property with errors or unsupported features, it will often ignore any values and fields in the property that follow the error or unsupported feature.
• Related to the previous observation: if you set Explorer to ignore document colors, it will do so, but still support other CSS1 properties. For example, the declaration BODY {background: cyan url(redsquare.gif) center top repeat-y} will result in a normal page with a red strip running down its center, but no cyan.
• Explorer sometimes gets confused about which bullet shape it should be using for unordered lists. This doesn't really have anything to do with CSS1, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Acknowledgements

I'd like to thank these persons for contributing ideas and information to this reference:

• Braden N. McDaniel, author of the original MSIE/CSS1 page. I've been following in his footsteps the whole way, and am indebted to him for the information he has provided me in my efforts.
• David Holzgang, who contributed some observations and was the first to send me feedback regarding this page (after Braden, that is).

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