Check for support for hover on non <a> elements

[Robert Mark Bram]

Hi All!

Problem I began with: Netscape/Opera supports hover for different elements,
IE only supports hover for <a> and I want to use hover for <td class="menu">

I then found a fix using some Javascript here:
http://webpages.charter.net/mmmbeer/code/arbitrary-hover/

It works ok for IE now.

Problem I now have: I don't want the script to run in a browser that does
support hover for <td>.

In other words I noticed that the script was still running for Netscape and
Opera - but I would prefer to let those browser's native hover support to
work since I notice that in some cases the script can introduce lag at
loading time.

I don't want to sniff for IE: I know how unreliable browser sniffing is. I
would rather sniff for the lack of hover support.

Can anyone give me clues as to how this might be done?

Any help would be most appreciated!

Rob

 

[Mark Parnell]

I don't want to sniff for IE: I know how unreliable browser sniffing is. I
would rather sniff for the lack of hover support.

You could use conditional comments. It's kind of browser sniffing, but
it is reliable.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/overview/ccomment_ovw.asp

 

[Robert Mark Bram]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the reply!

You could use conditional comments. It's kind of browser sniffing, but
it is reliable.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/overview/ccomment_ovw.asp

Well, this seems to work ok:

<!--[if IE 5]>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"
src="../bin/ieHoverFix.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

It feels like a hack.. *grin* but then again, just about every single
'advanced' thing I try to do in Javascript lately ends up feeling like a
hack! *sigh*

Rob

 

[Mark Parnell]

<!--[if IE 5]>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"
src="../bin/ieHoverFix.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

Yep, that's the one. Note that the above will only affect IE5.x, not

It feels like a hack..

It is. ;-)

*grin* but then again, just about every single
'advanced' thing I try to do in Javascript lately ends up feeling like a
hack! *sigh*

<g>

 

[rf]

Mark Parnell

Change the first line to <!--[if gte IE 5]>

<!--[if gte IE 5]-->

 

[Mark Parnell]

<!--[if gte IE 5]-->

No, that is then a normal HTML comment, so other browsers will still see
the stuff in between. If you wanted other browsers to see it and *not*
IE, you could do <!--[if !gte IE 5]-->

Fun for the whole family.

 

[rf]

<!--[if gte IE 5]-->

No, that is then a normal HTML comment, so other browsers will still see
the stuff in between. If you wanted other browsers to see it and *not*
IE, you could do <!--[if !gte IE 5]-->

<runs to look at MS documentation>

Ah, so *that's* how the buggers work. Who'd have guessed

Fun for the whole family.

Indeed.

 

[Spartanicus]

<td class="menu">

Don't use tables for layout.

 

[Mick White]

Robert Mark Bram wrote:

Well, this seems to work ok:

<!--[if IE 5]>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"
src="../bin/ieHoverFix.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

Windows only, though.
Mick

 

[Michael Wilcox]

Yep, that's the one. Note that the above will only affect IE5.x, not
IE6. Change the first line to <!--[if gte IE 5]> and it will work in
anything from IE5 up.

Would it be better to use <!--[if IE]> to detect all versions of IE?

 

[Grant Wagner]

Well, this seems to work ok:

<!--[if IE 5]>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"
src="../bin/ieHoverFix.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

Windows only, though.
Mick

That's the whole point. He wants some hover behaviour to be
included only for IE. To other browsers the above code looks like
a comment. Only IE evaluates it, only IE will load the extenal JS
file. If IE7 (or 6.5 or 6.0SP2 or whatever) starts supporting
td:hover, he can change the condition to be something like:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>

 

[Mick White]

Mick White wrote:



That's the whole point. He wants some hover behaviour to be
included only for IE.

The comments are ignored on IE Mac...
Mick

To other browsers the above code looks like

a comment. Only IE evaluates it, only IE will load the extenal JS
file. If IE7 (or 6.5 or 6.0SP2 or whatever) starts supporting
td:hover, he can change the condition to be something like:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>

 

[Sam Hughes]

The comments are ignored on IE Mac...
Mick

That's not a problem, though, because IE Mac's rendering engine is
different from that of IE Dows.

 

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

Would it be better to use <!--[if IE]> to detect all versions of IE?

Do you plan to maintain the page in all future?

Otherwise, I would recommend:
<!--[if lt IE 7]>
so that you don't block future versions unnecessarily.

/L

 

[Mark Parnell]

That's not a problem, though, because IE Mac's rendering engine is
different from that of IE Dows.

Does IE Mac support :hover on elements other than <a>?

 

[Toby Inkster]

Does IE Mac support :hover on elements other than <a>?

Nope. IIRC it's only KHTML, Gecko and Opera 6+ (perhaps 5.1x?) that do.

 

[Richard Cornford]

Nope. IIRC it's only KHTML, Gecko and Opera 6+
(perhaps 5.1x?) that do.

How does Mac IE get on with VBScirpt? If it can understand it then maybe
a VBScirpt implementation would be successfully ignored by all non-IE
browsers. Or VBScript being used to write the script tags into the page
(so it wouldn't happen on non-IE browsers).

Or maybe specifying the language type as "text/jscript" would be enough
to keep non-IE browsers from attempting to load/use the external JS
file.

Richard.