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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-06T22:06:26+00:00

I was digging around on some HTML on a webpage and saw this: <!DOCTYPE

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I was digging around on some HTML on a webpage and saw this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<!--[if IE]><![endif]--><!--Empty IE conditional comment to improve site performance-->
<html lang="en">
  <head>

Does having an empty IE conditional really improve a site’s performance? What does it do to improve performance?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    According to some online articles, IT DOES if you have a IE conditional css to load.
    See http://www.phpied.com/conditional-comments-block-downloads/

    If you have this in your page, for example:

    <!--[if IE 6 ]>
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"
      href="styles/ie6.css">
<![endif]-->

    It will block further download before the main CSS is loaded.

    If you add this at the start of the page:

    <!--[if IE]><![endif]-->

    This will not happen.

    P.S. I am really surprised when I read the article. So that’s a joke of IE.

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