Known issues with gzip and IE6

Question

I read that some versions of IE6 have known issues with gzip compression, but I have found little explanation as to what these issues are. What are the known issues with gzip compression and IE6?

Answer 1

The problem is described in this answer.

If you are using Apache there is information at the Ultimate IE6 > Cheatsheet: How To Fix 25+ Internet Explorer 6 Bugs on how to work around it:

Some versions of IE6 prior to the XP SP2 update may have trouble with files that have been served using GZip compression. Fortunately, Seb Duggan found a IE6 GZip bug solution using ISAPI_Rewrite for Apache.

Seb's solution is to place the following code in the httpd.conf file in the ISAPI_Rewrite installation directory:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP:User-Agent} MSIE\ [5<span class="highlight">6</span>]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:User-Agent} !SV1
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} \.(css|js)$
RewriteHeader Accept-Encoding: .* $1