Zen Theme breaking IE Internet Explorer CSS? It’s not your modules…

15Feb09

I just worked on a Drupal website for over three hours on a problem that doesn’t exist.

If you’re using Zen Theme for Drupal 6 or 7 and your page is loading incorrectly in Internet Explorer IE6, IE7 or IE8 (namely, your page is loading without css), consider that Internet Explorer can load a maximum or 31 .css files. Boy that is interesting…wish I’d known it before.  Zen theme without any modules gets pretty close to this out of the box.  This is a very easy fix in a Drupal install, just turn on css aggregation in /admin/settings/performance (/admin/config/development/performance in Drupal 7).

I learned this after completely validating my css, ripping the guts out of my .tpl.php and template.php files, eating a sandwich and disabling 6 or 7 modules.

Filed under: Development   |  21 Comments

21 Responses to “Zen Theme breaking IE Internet Explorer CSS? It’s not your modules…”  

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  1. 1 Lipu on Jul 7th, 2009 said:

    Hi,

    Thank you soooo much. It saved my day! I did everything I could think of to debug this problem. But after 2.5 hours struggle, I saw your post.

    Good work :)

    Lipu

  2. 2 Karen on Aug 24th, 2009 said:

    Holy crap! Thanks for posting this. I was pulling my hair out and pretty much ran through the same debugging as you. Thank you thank you thank you.

  3. 3 Sprk on Sep 3rd, 2009 said:

    Thanks so much… I’ve just gone through the same process. You know, examining my css, validating it and ending with the same result, styles not being recognised by this bloody browser… I’m glad I found this.

    31 seems like a totally stupid number for a limit, by the way.

  4. 4 Tammo on Sep 29th, 2009 said:

    Also ran into problems with own created zen-subtheme. In IE7, IE8, Firefox everything looks OK, but in IE 6 the content is narrowed too much. Also tried your solution, but that does not work,

    http://abc.kleinestappen.nl/vo/voortgezet-onderwijs-vo (in IE6)

    all tips/help greatly appreciated!

    Tammo

  5. 5 John on Sep 30th, 2009 said:

    Tammo…welcome to IE6 CSS hell. I glanced at your link but you’re in site maintenance mode so I couldn’t see what you’re doing. Good luck!

  6. 6 Brandon on Jun 14th, 2010 said:

    Amazing! Thank you.

  7. 7 Colin on Jul 6th, 2010 said:

    You are a life saver… thanks so much for that info… it works

  8. 8 Jon on Aug 11th, 2010 said:

    Many thanks… I’m using the Mac to develop a site and wasn’t worrying about checking for IE compatibility yet; when the client got back to me to say the site looked awful I spent hours trying to figure it out… worked perfectly when I turned on CSS aggregation.

  9. 9 krs on Aug 25th, 2010 said:

    31 CSS terror! thanks

  10. 10 dspring on Sep 9th, 2010 said:

    Life saver!

  11. 11 thank you on Nov 27th, 2010 said:

    thank you!

  12. 12 Jake on Nov 28th, 2010 said:

    Thanks. This saved me a lot of time.

  13. 13 T on Nov 29th, 2010 said:

    Thank you so much for this post! Just got myself a ‘halleluja-moment’ thanks to you :)

  14. 14 guldi on Dec 10th, 2010 said:

    thx mate, you saved me! :D

  15. 15 Annie on Jan 14th, 2011 said:

    Thank you SO MUCH! I was getting supremely annoyed withe broken css in IE and you SAVED ME!

    Thank you so much!

  16. 16 STaRMaN on Feb 13th, 2011 said:

    Thank You John!. I’m having this problem.. and i thought that is a problem with css in my zen theme… or the order in which css files are applied.. . I enabled that option, and all solved. Thanks a lot.

  17. 17 el nucli on Feb 22nd, 2011 said:

    We love you, John!!!

  18. 18 Ashley on Jun 13th, 2011 said:

    Today I had a look at my website in IE6 and IE7, only to find that the layout had completely borked out on me. I looked for all sorts of solutions, and could not find a single thing that worked – apart from this one.

    Seriously, 31 CSS files? I know the nearest power of 2 is 32, so it’s not completely silly to choose 31 if, for some reason, IE is running a separate CSS sheet in the background, but still… Wow.

    Btw, thanks very much for the information, and now I don’t have to worry too much about my website and its compatibility with IE6 & 7!

  19. 19 Conrad on Aug 26th, 2011 said:

    Another thanks!

    Just had a nasty shock having not checked site in IE for a month or so. Glad it was only 30 mins before finding this.

  20. 20 alex on Oct 26th, 2011 said:

    Thanks!! I can’t believe it was just this!!!
    FYI make sure if you’re in Drupal 6…the path to go to the settings is Home › Administer › Site configuration ›Performance

  21. 21 dan on Nov 7th, 2011 said:

    you saved my ass. thanks.

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