Home/ Questions/Q 6785403
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-26T17:07:21+00:00

I am using the HTML5 Boilerplate and never had a problem with it until

  • 0

I am using the HTML5 Boilerplate and never had a problem with it until now, when I have started using Selectivizr. For some reason, which I dont understand, IE8 produced a Javascript error.

After some testing, I noticed that the error was gone when I stopped using the conditional browser comments (in the Boilerplate) that add a class to html depending on the browser you are using:

<!--[if lt IE 7]> <html class="no-js ie6 oldie" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 7]>    <html class="no-js ie7 oldie" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8]>    <html class="no-js ie8 oldie" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if gt IE 8]><!--> <html class="no-js" lang="en"> <!--<![endif]-->

As I said, when I remove the code above and replace it with <html> everything works fine.

Since I dont want to remove the conditional comments completely (they help me to write browser specific css), I thought of doing the same, but instead of applying it to html I will do it for the <body>:

<!--[if lt IE 7]> <body class="no-js ie6 oldie" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 7]>    <body class="no-js ie7 oldie" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8]>    <body class="no-js ie8 oldie" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if gt IE 8]><!--> <body class="no-js" lang="en"> <!--<![endif]-->

Everything seems to work okay, but since I am a newbie, I would just like to verify that this workaround is okay? Or is there a downside?

And one more question offtopic: When a user visits the site with Firefox or Chrome, what body will be “used”? I guess it will “use” body without a class?

My logic would tell me to write another conditional comment, to make sure to “use” body for all other browsers, however in the official Boilerplate template no such comment exists and therefor I guess its not needed… Why not?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    We actually originally had them on the <body> tag. 🙂

    We moved them for two small reasons:

    • The multiple classnames bug in IE6
    • CMS’s that use the body element for their own classes.

    You can move the classes to <body> without much problem. You can also leave lang=en on the HTML element, cleaning things up.

    More deets here: https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/issues/44

    • 0