Marco Slot

Arithmetic Layout Manager

IE-conditional comments in XSLT

For a long while I've thought this to be impossible, but recently I ran into a few useful sources. It turns out both IE and non-IE comments are quite possible to generate from XSLT. Both use a very different syntax.

This piece of XSLT code from the source code of this very website demonstrates how to use the two types of conditional comments:

<xsl:comment><![CDATA[[if !IE]><!]]></xsl:comment>
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
   <xsl:comment>
      @import url("style/Moz.main.css");      /* level 1 */
      @import url("style/Moz.window.css");    /* level 2 */
      @import url("style/Moz.document.css");  /* level 3 */
   </xsl:comment>
</style>
<xsl:comment><![CDATA[<![endif]]]></xsl:comment>


<xsl:comment>[if IE]>
   <![CDATA[
      <style type="text/css" media="screen">
         @import url('style/IE.main.css');      /* level 1 */
         @import url('style/IE.window.css');    /* level 2 */
         @import url('style/IE.document.css');  /* level 3 */
      </style>
   ]]>
&lt;![endif]</xsl:comment>

The resulting code is:

<!--[if !IE]><!-->
   <style type="text/css" media="screen">
   <!--
      @import url("style/Moz.main.css");      /* level 1 */
      @import url("style/Moz.window.css");    /* level 2 */
      @import url("style/Moz.document.css");  /* level 3 */
   -->
   </style>
<!--<![endif]-->
<!--[if IE]>
   <style type="text/css" media="screen">
      @import url('style/IE.main.css');      /* level 1 */
      @import url('style/IE.window.css');    /* level 2 */
      @import url('style/IE.document.css');  /* level 3 */
   </style>
<![endif]-->