jQuery IE6 CSS :hover support

This plugin scans through all CSS stylesheets and finds :hover pseudo-selectors, then adds the appropriate event handlers to make the CSS work in Internet Explorer 6.

The function takes an optional boolean parameter, which if true will use live() instead of bind() to make sure all future dynamically-generated elements on a page are supported by the fix.

There are smarts built in to not run if the browser is not IE6, and also not to run on a:hover selectors (since IE6 already supports :hover for a elements).

Usage

$.ie6hover(); - Add hover support to only the elements on a page at the time the function is called.

$.ie6hover(true); - Add hover support to all current and future elements on a page.

Notes

To save downloading the script for non-IE6 users, it's probably better to load the script within conditional comments:

<!--[if IE 6]>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.ie6hover.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

Known Issues

This plugin will not work on stylesheets loaded from a domain different from the domain the page is on, due to cross-site security policies.

Also, there's no way to detect !important in CSS via JavaScript (as far as I'm aware), so any CSS :hover rules that use !important will not be 100% replicated.

Live binding: $.ie6hover(true)

This plugin uses the mouseenter and mouseleave events by default. However, jQuery versions less than 1.4 don't support these events with the live() bind method - so IE6 Hover switches to use mouseover and mouseout for these jQuery versions. Be aware that this can produce unexpected results with nested :hover elements.

For jQuery versions 1.4 to 1.5.2 there is also a bug (5884 - fixed in jQuery 1.6) in the jQuery core relating to nested mouseenter and mouseleave events that make them behave like mouseover and mouseout in certain circumstances. Be aware of this if using CSS selectors such as li:hover which can match multiple nested elements.

Changelog

1.1.0

• Rebuilt how CSS rules are matched
• Added support for a lot of new cases that weren't matched before, mainly:
  • #id and .class attributes
  • multiple hovered elements per rule
• Credit to Pierre Maoui (poupougnac) for some of the test cases and a partial code rewrite

1.0.1

• De-duplication of jQuery selectors to save performance

1.0.0

• Basic support for element:hover (excluding a:hover)
• Option to use bind() or live()