How do I make background-size work in IE?

Question

A bit late, but this could also be useful. There is an IE filter, for IE 5.5+, which you can apply:

filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(
src='images/logo.gif',
sizingMethod='scale');

-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(
src='images/logo.gif',
sizingMethod='scale')";

However, this scales the entire image to fit in the allocated area, so if you're using a sprite, this may cause issues.

Specification: AlphaImageLoader Filter @microsoft

I created jquery.backgroundSize.js: a 1.5K jquery plugin that can be used as a IE8 fallback for "cover" and "contain" values. Have a look at the demo.

Thanks to this post, my full css for cross browser happiness is:

<style>
    .backgroundpic {
        background-image: url('img/home.jpg');
        background-size: cover;
        filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(
        src='img/home.jpg',
        sizingMethod='scale');
    }
</style>

It's been so long since I've worked on this piece of code, but I'd like to add for more browser compatibility I've appended this to my CSS for more browser compatibility:

-webkit-background-size: cover;
-moz-background-size: cover;
-o-background-size: cover;
background-size: cover;

Even later, but this could be usefull too. There is the jQuery-backstretch-plugin you can use as a polyfill for background-size: cover. I guess it must be possible (and fairly simple) to grab the css-background-url property with jQuery and feed it to the jQuery-backstretch plugin. Good practice would be to test for background-size-support with modernizr and use this plugin as a fallback.

The backstretch-plugin was mentioned on SO here.The jQuery-backstretch-plugin-site is here.

In similar fashion you could make a jQuery-plugin or script that makes background-size work in your situation (background-size: 100%) and in IE8-. So to answer your question: Yes there is a way but atm there is no plug-and-play solution (ie you have to do some coding yourself).

(disclaimer: I didn't examine the backstretch-plugin thoroughly but it seems to do the same as background-size: cover)

There is a good polyfill for that: louisremi/background-size-polyfill

To quote the documentation:

Upload backgroundsize.min.htc to your website, along with the .htaccess that will send the mime-type required by IE (Apache only — it's built in nginx, node and IIS).

Everywhere you use background-size in your CSS, add a reference to this file.

.selector { 
    background-size: cover;
    /* The url is relative to the document, not to the css file! */
    /* Prefer absolute urls to avoid confusion. */
    -ms-behavior: url(/backgroundsize.min.htc);
}

In IE11 Windows 7 this worked for me,

background-size: 100% 100%;