Is it okay to use zoom:1 in my css classes?

Question

Whenever I find IE is displaying my website weird (different from chrome and firefox), I try putting a zoom:1 in the css class for the part that is being displayed weird. A lot of the time this fixes the problem and makes it look consistent with the other browsers.

Is it a problem to use zoom:1? I know my CSS won't validate, but are there any real world problems that can arise if I rely too much on using zoom:1?

Answer 1

The problem you are fighting with this is the IE hasLayout issue. Here is a good article and overview on which properties also trigger "having Layout" in IE.

I know of no side-effects to zoom: 1 except that it's not W3C valid. I'm pretty sure I'm using it myself in some projects.

However, there is of course the remote chance that zoom becomes a real CSS property one day - or gets used in another proprietary context like on the iPad or whatever - which could lead to things breaking.

A really clean solution, zoom is not. If at all possible, it's a good idea to give the element "Layout" in some other way as outlined in the article.

Answer 2

To the contrary, there are definitive downsides to using zoom:1, even in IE. Usually, I only include it in IE-only stylesheets, but even in the past few days I've wrestled with some layout issues because I opted to use *{zoom:1;}

-- the takeaway -- use it on a limited basis. If you only care about IE7+, you can use min-height: 1%, which has the same effect of triggering hasLayout

Answer 3

As of November 2012, it is ever more likely that zoom will someday become valid CSS, although it seems that using it in the above context should not have any negative side-effects.

See: http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-device-adapt/ or http://www.w3.org/TR/css-device-adapt/

Answer 4

zoom is only supported by IE, so not at the moment. Potentially there could be a future property called zoom which could mess things up, but this is unlikely due to widespread usage.

Answer 5

display: inline-block; does the same thing, but is standard code.

In the rare case it creates a problem, you can use

display: block !important; /* or inline, etc. */ 
display: inline-block; /* in this order */

to send it only to the ancient versions of Internet Explorer for which it's useful.