Older versions of Internet Explorer are frequently either inept or naughty. Or both. But they are still popular so we don’t want to ignore them. Conditional comments , which are nothing more than simple HTML comments that IE (up to version 9) happens to take a peep at, are used to throw a chunk of HTML at these browsers and only these browsers. Other well behaved, top-of-the-class browsers will simply see them as unremarkable comments and move along. This web site currently uses conditional comments to make a handful of amendments for IE 8 and below, including a small extra stylesheet, and the HTML5 Shiv required for these browsers to take notice of some HTML5 elements. Go ahead - view the source. They have become a commonly used method of latching extra CSS to a document to plaster over holes in these browsers’ display capabilities. So, for example, you might add something like this inside your head element: < link href = "everything.css" rel = "styles...