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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-14T14:25:28+00:00

My background is in WinForms programming and I’m trying to branch out a bit.

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My background is in WinForms programming and I’m trying to branch out a bit. I’m finding cross-browser issues a frustrating barrier in general, but have a specific one that I just can’t seem to work through.

I want to display an image and place a semi-transparent bar across the top and bottom. This isn’t my ultimate goal, of course, but it demonstrates the problem I’m having in a relatively short, self-contained, code fragment so let’s go with it.

The sample code below displays as intended in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. In IE8, the bar at the bottom doesn’t appear at all. I’ve researched it for hours but just can’t seem to come up with the solution.

I’m sure this is some dumb rookie mistake, but gotta start somewhere. Code snippet…

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title></title>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
</script>
<style type="text/css">
    .workarea
    {
        position: relative;
        border: 1px solid black;
        background-color: #ccc;
        overflow: hidden;
        cursor: move;
        -moz-user-focus: normal;
        -moz-user-select: none;
        unselectable: on;
    }

    .semitransparent
    {
        filter: alpha(opacity=70);
        -moz-opacity: 0.7;
        -khtml-opacity: 0.7;
        opacity: 0.7;
        background-color: Gray;
    }
</style>
</head>
<body style="width: 800px; height: 600px;">
<div id="workArea" class="workarea" style="width: 800px; height: 350px;
    left: 100px; top: 50px; background-color: White; border: 1px solid black;">
    <img alt="" src="images/TestImage.jpg" style="left: 0px; top: 0px; border: none;
        z-index: 1;" />
    <div id="topBar" class="semitransparent" style="position: absolute;width: 800px;
        height: 75px; left: 0px; top: 0px; min-height: 75px; border: none; z-index: 2;" />
    <div id="bottomBar" class="semitransparent" style="position: absolute; width: 800px;
        height: 75px; left: 0px; top: 275px; min-height: 75px; border: none; z-index: 2;" />
</div>
</body>
</html>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You are self-closing a div tag, which is not allowed to be self-closed.

    You must close the div tag like this: </div>.

    Some browsers will support stupid mistakes like these, and attempt to close the tags for you. IE, on the other hand, doesn’t.

    Try this:

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title></title>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
</script>
<style type="text/css">
    .workarea
    {
        position: relative;
        border: 1px solid black;
        background-color: #ccc;
        overflow: hidden;
        cursor: move;
        -moz-user-focus: normal;
        -moz-user-select: none;
        unselectable: on;
    }

    .semitransparent
    {
        filter: alpha(opacity=70);
        -moz-opacity: 0.7;
        -khtml-opacity: 0.7;
        opacity: 0.7;
        background-color: Gray;
    }
</style>
</head>
<body style="width: 800px; height: 600px;">
<div id="workArea" class="workarea" style="width: 800px; height: 350px;
    left: 100px; top: 50px; background-color: White; border: 1px solid black;">
    <img alt="" src="images/TestImage.jpg" style="left: 0px; top: 0px; border: none;
        z-index: 1;" />
    <div id="topBar" class="semitransparent" style="position: absolute;width: 800px;
        height: 75px; left: 0px; top: 0px; min-height: 75px; border: none; z-index: 2;" ></div>
    <div id="bottomBar" class="semitransparent" style="position: absolute; width: 800px;
        height: 75px; left: 0px; top: 275px; min-height: 75px; border: none; z-index: 2;"></div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
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