An IE7 hover problem

jpullam

12-02-2009, 04:54 PM

I have a problem getting IE7 to apply a hover style and no matter what I have tried or where I have googled I haven't been able to come up with a workaround. The code works on all other browsers and on IE8, but from what I have read, IE7 is pretty buggy in this area.

I've extracted this code from a much larger app in order to isolate the problem. What I'm down to is as follows:

<table><tr>
<td width="120" align="center" valign="top">
<div class="IE7Open"><a class="IE7OpenLink">TentName</a></div>
</td></tr></table>

The style is:

.IE7Open {border-style: solid; border-color: #003399; border-width: 1px; background-color:#a8cefc;
width: 100px; height: 16px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 5px;}
.IE7OpenLink {text-decoration:none;}
a:hover.IE7OpenLink {color: #C700FF; font-weight:bold; cursor:pointer; }

I know it may look a little odd extracted like this, but trust me, the source page is far more complicated and tough to read.

Any suggestions on how to get IE7 to apply the hover?

tomws

12-02-2009, 05:51 PM

Try this instead:
a.IE7OpenLink:hover{/*whatever here*/}

jpullam

12-02-2009, 05:57 PM

No, that didn't change anything. Still works fine in all places except IE7.

Thanx for suggesting.

Excavator

12-02-2009, 06:57 PM

Hello jpullam,
What DocType is your site using? There is some advantage to be gained in CSS conformity by using a Strict DocType when dealing with hover issues, as well as many other issues, in IE7.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/08/22/712830.aspx

...

jpullam

12-02-2009, 07:57 PM

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 //EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

jpullam

12-02-2009, 08:40 PM

I've gotten it down to its most basic form and still it won't work!!

The page has

<a class="IE7OpenLink">Any Name</a>

and CSS is

a.IE7OpenLink:hover {text-decoration:none; color: #C700FF; font-weight:bold;}

and it doesn't work in IE7. It seems so elemental. In fact other hover's do work in IE7. What am I missing?

Excavator

12-02-2009, 08:53 PM

<a class="IE7OpenLink">Any Name</a> is invalid!

Try this in IE7 -<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<style type="text/css">
a.IE7OpenLink:hover {text-decoration:none; color: #C700FF; font-weight:bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<a href="#" class="IE7OpenLink">Any Name</a>
</body>
</html>

jpullam

12-03-2009, 09:35 PM

I'm not sure that I agree that <a class="IE7OpenLink">Any Name</a> is really invalid. The original HTML contained an onclick handler (and a lot more) and I just removed things to get down to the real basics that showed where the problem actually was. But if you are saying that putting in an href="#" will fix it, then I'm glad to do that.

And yes, it seems that did fix it, so thanks a lot.

drhowarddrfine

12-03-2009, 10:48 PM

IE in general doesn't handle the DOM well at all so you probably need a href for it to fill the tree out as best it can.