Does IE8 support HTML5 and CSS3?

Question

I have a requirement when a client needs his website to be developed in html5 and css3 . However, it seems that ie6 , ie7 do not support HTML5 and CSS3. The client said that HTML5 and CSS3 are supported in ie8 , but I need to know to what extent it is really supported.

Answer 1

• No browser supports all HTML 5 or CSS 3
• Many browsers (including IE8) support some features added in HTML 5 or CSS 3.
• All browsers support some of HTML 5.
• All major graphical browsers support some of CSS 3

Worry about what you want to achieve, and then look for the best way to achieve it. Do not start with the available tools, and then try to find them to use.

Design for the lowest common denominator, and then gradually improve from there.

Answer 2

Try looking at caniuse or html5test websites.

Answer 3

IE8 does not support HTML5, which was not part of HTML4, since it was developed before HTML5 even became a W3C project.

CSS3: there is one or another property that did not do it in CSS 2.1, which IE8 actually supports, for example text-wrap . However, this is not worth mentioning. Especially those goodies like shadow shadows and rounded corners do not exist in IE8.

Look at the links in yojimbo87 answer for more information on supported properties.

What's worse is that even IE9 does not support most of HTML5. They focused on canvas, video, and audio and claim that it is now "ready for HTML5." But, for example, all the fields of the new form are completely absent, and not many new JavaScript APIs.

So, speaking of this, no, IE8 does not support HTML5. It can, however, display HTML5 documents as the specification is written with backup options for older browsers.

Answer 4

ie6 and ie7 almost do not support html5 and css3.

Take a look at the Quirksmode compatibility table at: http://www.quirksmode.org/compatibility.html

If you need to develop in html5, I would recommend taking a look at Modernizr. This is a javascript library that checks the users browser and modifies html / css according to its capabilities.
http://www.modernizr.com/

Answer 5

The HTML5 specification is still under development by phaze. You can try to sell client material that is not yet developed. Like InternetExplorer, then no, it supports about 5% of the current HTML5 specifications.

Answer 6

HTML5 and CSS3 are largely not supported by IE8. I suggest you use Firefox 4 from the Gecko browser family or Google Chrome or Safari (if you are on MacOSX) from the Webkit browser family. They perfectly support HTML5. Although I have not tried it myself, I heard that IE9 has excellent HTML5 support. But it only works on Windows 7.

Firefox or Chrome would be my choice, though.

Answer 7

With the current browser support for HTML5 and CSS3, the browser must either be insane, or b) not know what they are about. Although it is true that HTML5 and CSS3 are gaining support fairly quickly, most browsers do not have good support for the more advanced functions of the two technicians, for example, <audio> and <video> not widely supported, nor is there <canvas> . As for CSS3, quite a few of its bits are well supported, but IE users will have to get by.

As a side note, IE6 is still very heavily used in China, so if you are targeting this market, stick to older, better supported technologies.

Answer 8

IE-8 actually supports HTML-4, it is better to use chrome, firfox or sefari for HTML-5. You can see more here