Recipe 9.5 Keeping CSS Rules from Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh

Problem

You want to hide certain rules from Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh.

Solution

To hide CSS rules from Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh, insert a backslash in front of the closing comment with the characters */:

/* \*/

h1 { 

 font-size: 200%; 

 text-transform: uppercase;

 background-color: #666;

 }

After the rules pertaining to Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh, insert another comment line:

/* */

p { 

 text-transform: uppercase;

}

Discussion

This method exploits a simple comment-parsing problem found in Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh. The backslash before the closing comment causes the browser to think the comment actually has not closed; any valid CSS rules are hidden, allowing entire rule sets to be hidden from the browser until the next closing comment marker is hidden.