Text indent is not working in ie7

Question

I am working on a website and on the top navigation bar there is a search box, I applied the following css on the search submit button

#submit {
   background: url("img/new-search-icon.png") no-repeat scroll -1px 0 #FFFFFF;
   border:0 none;
   cursor:pointer;
   display:block;
   height:21px;
   padding:0;
   position:absolute;
   right:0;
   text-indent:-9999px;
   top:0;
   width:20px;
   z-index:2;
}

My Problem is in IE7 the text indent is not working please help me if you want to see the demo you can view it by clicking here Click here. Please help me.

Bedivere

Yes text-transform: capitalize; is working :) – Emission

Answer 1

Add this CSS to make IE7 behave:

text-transform: capitalize;

Crazy but true.

Smukler

Unfortunately we don't have the source code for IE7, we may never know. – Amuse

Ahh geez. Why am I not surprised – Schmit

Sadly this bug is still present in IE10. – Pembrook

@NickJosevski according to MS, it's been supported since IE6. LOL is all I can say. msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/hh781508%28v=vs.85%29.aspx – Misogamy

Why isn't this the correct answer? Craziness that this works... but it does! – Aldana

Answer 2

while implementing the image replacement technique like above, there are some rules to go with css to get it work on IE browsers.

css declaration:

text-indent:-9999px;
text-transform:capitalize;


font-size:0;
display:block;
line-height:0;

font-size:0 is used to reduce the font size and works well in IE7. But even after adding this line, you would notice a black line(which is basically the text) on the center of the button in IE6.

display:block Negative text-indent works in IE only if this is added.

line-height:0 Another fix for IE6.

text-transform:capitalize I don't know the exact reason of including the property, somehow it fixes the issue.

Hope this helps.

Iranian

Thanks! text-indent alone was enough inside a span in Chrome, but Firefox 16 and IE7 also needed display:block. Didn't need any of the others. – Jasik

Answer 3

.submit {
    line-height: 0px;
    font-size: 0px;
    /* restante do teu código */
    }

este é um exemplo simse

Catchword

Answer 4

If nothing else works exactly right, this does:

color: transparent;
text-indent: 0 !important; /* reset the old negative value */

So normal browsers use the negative text-indent, ie7 gets special treatment using conditional comments

Vertu

Thanks! This is the only solution which worked for me.However its working without adding "text-indent: 0" as well. – Saying

Answer 5

Only following will do the job for you :)

   text-indent:-9999px !important;  
   line-height:0;

Clarkson

Answer 6

Has a similar problem in IE8. After eliminating all other possibilities, a line-height declaration elsewhere in the CSS was breaking the text-indent. solution: set the line-height explicitly to 0.

Hindbrain

Answer 7

text-transform: capitalize; actually had no effect for me (it was happening on a tags), but this worked

text-indent: -9999px
float: left
display: block
font-size: 0
line-height: 0
overflow: hidden

Conundrum

Answer 8

I don´t know if it´s the cause of your problem, but I think your background shorthand notation is wrong; the colour code should be at the start, not the end.

Graaf

Answer 9

Sorry a little late to the post, but was looking for a solution to the IE7 issue with negative text-indent. I started trying my own random ways and stumbled upon this. jUst wanted to post it out on Stack in case it may help others.

Trying to add an icon to a link and not show the text.

My CSS for all browsers

a.lnk_locked , a.lnk_notchecked, a.lnk_checked
{ background: url(../images/icons/icon_sprites.png) no-repeat; padding: 0 2px 0 0;   width:18px; height:18px; 
       vertical-align:middle; text-indent:-9009px; display:inline-block; overflow: hidden; zoom: 1; *display:inline;}
    a.lnk_locked    { background-position: -1px -217px; }

My CSS just for IE7

a.lnk_locked , a.lnk_notchecked, a.lnk_checked
{  text-indent:20px; padding-left:-20px; width:18px;}

Change

I just tried placing the indent negative padding into my main style sheet and it seems to be accepted by ie8 ie9 and ff. – Change

Answer 10

I just wanted to add for "others" (even though it not strictly related to the topic and not the ops problem).

Please ensure you use a "px" for your value. i.e. -9999px not -9999.

I've just spent 10 mins trying to debug why this didn't work. Staring at the value right in front of me.

I've been doing alot of Silverlight lately and so my mind didn't flip over to CSS markup requirements fast enough. Grrr.

You must include a unit of measurement.... or else it will just silently fail.

Ethiopian

Answer 11

The solution that I found to my text-indent woes in IE7, and something that I feel should be added to this thread is the following:

Doesn't work:

text-indent: -900009px;

Does work:

text-indent: -9999px;

I didn't know there was a limit? I guess there is.

Syndicalism

Answer 12

Don't use text-indent. Try this one instead:

display: block;
height: 0;
padding-top: 20px; //The height of your button
overflow: hidden;
background: url(image.png) no-repeat; // Image replacement

Works in all browsers including IE6.

Coronagraph

Answer 13

I tried all of the above with no success. I had to add a float:left before it picked up the text indent. IE7 is crazy, and by crazy I mean awful.

Disappoint

Answer 14

Here is some CSS I'm using that works for me in IE and doesn't rely on text-indent

.sprite {
    width:100%;
    height:0px;
    padding-top:38px;
    overflow:hidden;
    background-repeat:no-repeat;
    position:relative;
    float:left;
    display:block;
    font-size:0px;
    line-height:0px;
}
.sprite.twitter {
    background-image:url(/images/social/twitter-sprite.png);
    margin-top:8px;
    background-position: 4px 0px;
}
#social-links a:hover .sprite.twitter {
    background-position: 4px -38px;
}

Hispanicism