IE7 CSS Help

Download your IE7 Cheat Sheet today. The cheat sheet contains commands and keyboard shortcuts for IE7.

I just downloaded IE7 on my PC box to take a test drive, as its important to my job for the sites that I worked on to be cross-browser compatible. To my surprise, IE7 is now using font smoothing, just like Apple has been doing for years. They are using a technology called Clear Type which produces a similar effect to font smoothing. It currently now works with IE7 and Outlook.

Link to the Microsoft Article

If you think the text is too blurry and would like to turn it off, follow these instructions:

Be default, IE7 enables ClearType font rendering in the browser. Most people, especially those with LCD screens, will notice a big improvement (if ClearType is not installed already). However, many people will not like this type of font smoothing.

1. Open IE7
2. Open Tool Menu
3. Click Internet Options
4. Click Advanced Tabs
5. Under Multimedia, clear the Use ClearType checkbox
6. Click OK X 2

IE7 isnt the worst ever, at least they have given us a way to declare specific IE stylesheets with the use of Conditional Comments. These are great little snippets of code, that allow IE to read between the comments and load a specific IE stylesheet.

Conditional Comments allow you to create a comment that only IE will read, while other browsers will simply skim over it. You can include a link to a stylesheet that declares CSS styles specifically to use with IE browsers.

Here is an example of how you can declare a stylesheet that only IE7 will see/read:
<!--[if IE 7]><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="IE7styles.css" /><![endif]-->