Help:Internet Explorer

Older versions of Internet Explorer (IE), especially versions 6 and 7 (commonly abbreviated IE6 and IE7) have limitations in their CSS and HTML support. As Wikipedia expands its use of CSS3 and HTML5, support for these old browsers will become more limited, leaving older browsers unable to render a page as the editors intend. A number of specialized fixes for these older browsers are being removed as the MediaWiki software is being updated.

Where possible, users should upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 or higher, or install another modern browser such as Firefox or Google Chrome. We understand that some users do not have a choice, either by limitations of their system, corporate policy, or compatibility with other software.

In some instances, your CSS can be edited (if you are logged in to Wikipedia with a username and password) to add some level of support.

JavaScript

As of September 2014, JavaScript has been disabled for IE6 and IE7.

• Issues: Without updates, IE6 and IE7 have increasing security issues which can lead to vulnerabilities.
• Usage: JavaScript is used extensively on Wikipedia
  • Custom JavaScript
  • Tabs on Preferences
  • Edit toolbar
  • CharInsert toolbar which adds symbols
• Fix: none; except upgrading to IE8 or higher or using a different browser.

No backlinks for citations

IE9 does not show backlinks (^ ^{a b}) in the references section.

• Accessibility changes to the Cite CSS added user-select: none;. This is not supposed to be supported by IE9 but, apparently it causes this to fail oddly. IE8 and below do not support this selector; IE10 and above support it properly. Add this to your CSS and refresh:

.mw-cite-backlink, .cite-accessibility-label {display: inline !important;}

Image and text spacing

For examples, see Help:Internet Explorer/IE space issue.

Where images and text are intermixed, large gaps may appear in the text.

• IE6 and IE7 do not properly handle image thumbs mixed with text.
• Fix: none; except upgrading to IE8 or higher or using a different browser.

Columns

The CSS3 Columns module enables content to be divided into columns. Used in {{reflist}} for references; {{div col}} for other content.

• Issues: IE6, IE7, IE8, and IE9 do not support CSS columns.
• Fix: None; except upgrading to IE10 or higher or using a different browser.

<q>

Resolved with the deployment of MediaWiki 1.25/wmf19

<q>...</q> is used to mark text as quotations. It is used to format short works in Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2.

• IE6 and IE7 do not add the quotation marks, but instead style the content in italics by way of core CSS.
• Issues: The :before and :after selectors, and the quotes property are not supported in IE7 and below
• Fix: To change the style to normal: q { font-style: normal; }
• See T89595.

Testing

Virtual machines with various versions of IE are available from Modern.IE.