Is there a "converter" that converts CSS to be IE compatible?

Question

I have all this wonderful CSS I made for a website that uses functions not supported in IE 7-8. RGBA and transparencies being an example.

I'm sure many web developers have this problem, so I was thinking there might be a website or someplace that would make CSS/HTML at least somewhat IE compatible.

Answer 1

Kind of, it's called SASS and Compass. Compass comes with builtin CSS3 mixins and automatically inserts IE compatible rules along with the other vendor-specific rules for CSS3 properties.

They are not converters for existing CSS, but a CSS superset that allows you to write CSS in a different way. I originally resisted it since I felt like it would blunt my edge (knowing all hacks/workarounds/vendor specific stuff by heart), but it comes with many other advantages and increases maintainability and readability.

Sass is the superset language, Compass is a Sass framework with predefined mixins.

http://sass-lang.com/

http://compass-style.org/

All that being said, I highly recommend that you consider ranking your design elements in order of importance and embrace the idea of serving multiple versions of your site. The less essential effects should have a fallback for browsers that don't support them, users with non-modern browsers will get a less fancy but still perfectly acceptable experience. Having a perfectly uniform site across all platforms/browsers is the old way of thinking. Here's a good short article explaining the reasoning: 24 Ways: Circles of Confusion