HTML5shiv vs Dean Edwards IE7-js vs Modernizr – which to choose?

by

No, they’re not the same at all; they do completely different things.

  • html5shiv allows you to use the new HTML5 tags in versions of IE that don’t understand them. Without it, IE will choke on these tags, so you need this if you intend to use the tags. Don’t expect it to make the tags actually do anything in IE though! It just stop the browser complaining about them.

  • modernizr sets a bunch of classes in your HTML, depending on the available features, which you can use to change your layout according to what the browser supports. It also allows you to use the new HTML5 tags in IE, like html5shiv.

  • ie7.js (as well as ie8.js and ie9.js) uses Javascript to retro-fit some missing functionality to IE.

As far as I’m aware there’s no cross-over between them (aside from html5shiv/modernizr), so you can use any combination of them, depending on what features you need to implement.

While I’m on the subject, and since you’re asking about tools to make IE more compatible with other browsers, I suggest you also look into CSS3Pie, which will make your life much happier if you plan to use rounded corners on your site (plus one or two other features).

This also has no cross-over with the other three products you mentioned, though they do all aim to make old versions of IE slightly easier to work with.

More Related Contents:

  1. Correct way to use Modernizr to detect IE?
  2. How can i change the icon color to some other color in CSS?
  3. Unable to scroll on website
  4. Why not use tables for layout in HTML? [closed]
  5. CSS margin terror; Margin adds space outside parent element [duplicate]
  6. How can I position my div at the bottom of its container?
  7. Make CSS Hover state remain after “unhovering”
  8. How do I not underline an element in a link?
  9. How can I convert an HTML element to a canvas element?
  10. How create table only using tag and Css
  11. How can I correctly select the first or the last child with CSS?
  12. Another: Force Chrome to fully buffer mp4 video
  13. Send email from static page hosted on GitHub Pages
  14. Relative URL to a different port number in a hyperlink?
  15. YouTube: How to present embed video with sound muted
  16. Change last letter color
  17. Center image element in parent div
  18. What is the best way to embed LaTeX in a webpage?
  19. How to download file using anchor tag
  20. Vertical (rotated) text in HTML table
  21. CSS filter:invert not working with background-color
  22. CSS position absolute and full width problem
  23. How do I use Access-Control-Allow-Origin? Does it just go in between the html head tags?
  24. Size of font in CSS with slash
  25. Allow Access-Control-Allow-Origin header using HTML5 fetch API
  26. Zoom to fit: PDF Embedded in HTML
  27. How do I change the font-size of an element within ?
  28. Ticks for type=”range” HTML input
  29. Download attribute with a file name not working?
  30. overflow-y:visible not working when overflow-x:hidden is present [duplicate]

Leave a Comment