TOOLS - CSS: Professional Techniques for Modern Layout - page 35

Figure 1-35: The IE7.js page.

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...IE5 and IE6 will ignore it completely, and your links will be let untouched. (While this
would make Jakob Neilsen happy, the project's designer will be considerably less impressed.)
With IE9.js, though, the fancy script juggling will set things up so that IE5 and IE6 can apply
those styles to links, and so it Just Works. All you need is a link to IE9.js from any page that
needs it, and you're set.

Of course, none of this will have any ef ect if JavaScript is disabled, which means you have to
weigh the benei ts of this script against what you expect of your site's audience. Do a lot of
them even use IE6? Are they likely to have disabled JavaScript? And so on. Of course, those
are the same things we have to weigh with any site design, so at least it's a familiar process.

h e usual usage recommendation is to enclose the script element linking to the JavaScript
i le in a conditional comment, like so:

<!-- [ if lt IE 9]>
< script src= " /code/IE9.js " type= " text/javascript " ></ script >
< ! [ endif ]-->