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HTML Semantic Elements Not Rendering Correctly in Internet Explorer 11

πŸ‘€ Views: 2 πŸ’¬ Answers: 1 πŸ“… Created: 2025-06-08
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I've been banging my head against this for hours. I'm currently working on a project that extensively uses HTML5 semantic elements like `<article>`, `<section>`, and `<nav>`. While testing in modern browsers, everything looks great, but I've noticed that in Internet Explorer 11, these elements aren't rendering as expected. For instance, the `<nav>` element appears to have no styling applied and seems to be rendering as a block-level element without any of my CSS styles. I'm using the following basic structure: ```html <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <title>Semantic Elements Test</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css"> </head> <body> <header> <h1>My Website</h1> <nav> <ul> <li><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#">About</a></li> <li><a href="#">Contact</a></li> </ul> </nav> </header> <section> <article> <h2>Article Title</h2> <p>This is a sample article.</p> </article> </section> </body> </html> ``` In my `styles.css`, I have the following styles: ```css nav { background-color: #333; color: white; padding: 10px; } nav ul { list-style-type: none; padding: 0; } nav a { color: white; text-decoration: none; } ``` When I inspect the elements in IE11, I see that the `<nav>` element doesn’t have any of the applied styles. I've tried adding a `<!DOCTYPE html>` declaration to ensure standards mode, and I even added a polyfill for HTML5 elements in IE, but that didn't make a difference. The console is not showing any errors, but the layout is completely broken compared to other browsers like Chrome and Firefox. Is there something specific I might be missing or doing incorrectly that could lead to this rendering scenario in Internet Explorer 11? Any advice on how to troubleshoot this effectively would be greatly appreciated! Am I missing something obvious?