Member Avatar for MDanz

Hello, what do professional web designers do to overcome this problem? Is there a simple solution for png transparency support in ie6? I found a fix but i don't want to buy any license to use some code.

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As and observe, the most common professional choice is to stop supporting IE6 for public sites because modern browsers handle PNG alpha natively and IE6 usage has fallen to very low levels. That said, legacy intranets or clients sometimes still require IE6 support, so practical options exist and avoid paid libraries.

A recommended workflow:

  • Decide a support policy up front (drop IE6, partial support, or full support).
  • If dropping IE6, serve PNG24/PNG32 and use graceful degradation (solid-color fallbacks or PNG8) where exact transparency is not required.
  • If supporting IE6, use an IE6-only stylesheet via conditional comments and apply either non-alpha fallback images or a targeted fix. A common free approach is the Microsoft AlphaImageLoader filter or an HTC script that emulates PNG alpha; both must be used sparingly because they break background-repeat, affect layout, and hurt rendering performance.

Example of targeting only IE6:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="ie6.css" />
<![endif]>

and in ie6.css:

.logo { background: none; filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='images/logo.png', sizingMethod='crop'); }

Troubleshooting notes: ensure any .htc files are served with the correct MIME type (text/x-component); test for repeated backgrounds and layout shifts; prefer PNG8 or GIF for small icons; and measure performance impact. For most public-facing projects the simplest and most future-proof route remains dropping IE6 support.

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Member Avatar for Member #46692

I think most website developers these days don't even support ie6.

For example, if you look over at http://themeforest.net/, if you wish to sell a theme there you don't have to give support for ie6. Plus their market share is going down rapidly.

I would side step using transparent pngs altogether. Also the following link might be of use...

http://24ways.org/2007/supersleight-transparent-png-in-ie6

Also this:

Edited by Member #46692 because: n/a
Member Avatar for matricol

who uses ie6 anymore?

Member Avatar for pixelsoul

Abandon any support for IE6. It is gone, done, out the door. In fact IE7 is not too far from no longer being supported by Microsoft (though I still will creates sites that are compatible with it and have fall backs for it).

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