Header image stretches too high in Internet Explorer

Okay, I think I’ve pretty well fixed the problem by making a child theme, copying header.php, and adding the following code before the </header> tag:

<!–[if IE 8]>
<script>
var imgs, i, w;
var imgs = document.getElementsByTagName( ‘img’ );
for( i = 0; i < imgs.length; i++ ) {
w = imgs[i].getAttribute( ‘width’ );
if ( 615 < w ) {
imgs[i].removeAttribute( ‘width’ );
imgs[i].removeAttribute( ‘height’ );
}
}
</script>
<![endif]–>

There’s still a problem, though. In IE8, it renders the page too wide. The problem does not seem to happen in IE9/10 etc.

Wow. As of last month, Internet Explorer 8 is still being used by 22% of desktop visitors — nearly one FOURTH of visitors who are using an actual computer — and you don’t support it?

I’m very surprised.

At least I found a fix for the major issue, which was the stretching of the header image. The page being too wide, I can live with.

Thanks for the reference to that plugin. However, the site works better without it.

The fix I posted above is good, though. If you were to incorporate it into your header.php, it would help others using your theme to be able to present a better-looking site to the large number of visitors who use IE8.

As for discouraging the use of IE8, should I put up a page that says to visitors, “I don’t like your choice of browser, so if this site looks crappy, it’s not my fault?”

20 to 30% of computer users still use Windows XP even given its upcoming end of support life. And on Windows XP, version 8 is the highest version of IE that you can even get. These people’s computers do not support IE 9. And they are a very significant percentage of users.

What do you say to these people? “Sorry, we don’t serve you. Either go buy a new computer, or go to some other web site?” My clients won’t be very impressed with my saying that to a large percentage of their customers.

So I don’t see it as being my job to tell visitors what OS or browser I want them to use. I might as well tell them, “Sorry, we don’t cater to smartphones.”

My job is to cater to whatever they’re using. And for 22% of people who have computers, that’s still Internet Explorer 8.