Concerning CSS hacks part 4
It is harmful to use “* html” because you don’t know whether the issues - real bugs or simple differences in behavior - you are working around will be removed when “* html” goes away. If you DO know this for the particular issue you’re working around, then it is not harmful. If you do NOT know this, then you should use a versioning-capable system like conditional comments, and be prepared that you will have to update your workarounds when the issues are fixed.
That seems entirely sensible. I do think the original posting is highly unclear in this regard. And I do think the vast majority of sites using the * html hack, for instance, know why they are doing so.
I think the point is many web developers posting to this blog expressing confusion at this article, are actually expressing *trust* that the other bugs you’ve fixed, have indeed been fixed. If, as per your excellent previous postings, this there should be no need for sane web developers to start moving to conditional comments, as you yourself note.
I definitely like a previous posters idea of open sourcing ie. perhaps they could run dual versions. standardIE and openIE, a community run project. similar to the regular SUSE versus openSUSE. i think this would make ie a lot better. and it wouldnt take 4 years to come out with a new version. (it was only 1 year between firefox releases)
I also like mozilla’s nightly builds, a new testing build every day. many previous posts on this blog talk about bug fixes, but since there’s no build for us to test, theres only the very limited ie dev staff to test it. i enjoy using the firefox auto-update to download a small 500k update everyday that includes bug fixes and new features. it allows for quicker bug filing and fixing. (most major firefox bugs get fixed in a few hours/minutes).
