All other browsre may have supported the opacity CSS property whereas Internext explorer use its properietary alpha filter.
opacity: 0.5;
filter: alpha(opacity=50);
where opacity notation is for all other browsers, and filter is for IE.
so the following code shows how you can do a cross browser opacity
<html>
<head>
<title>Opacity Style Test</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
(function () {
var div = document.createElement("div");
div.innerHTML = "<div style='opacity:.5;'></div>";
// If .5 becomes 0.5, we assume the browser knows how
// to handle native opacity
var native = div.firstChild.style.opacity === "0.5";
this.opacityStyle = function (elem, value) {
if (typeof value !== "undefined") {
if (native) {
elem.style.opacity = value;
} else {
// .filter may not exist
elem.style.filter = (elem.style.filter || "")
// Need to replace any existing alpha
.replace(/alpha\([^)]*\)/, "") +
// If we have a number, set that as the value (0-100)
(parseFloat(value) + '' == "NaN" ?
"" :
"alpha(opacity=" + value * 100 + ")");
}
elem.style[floatName] = value;
}
if (native) {
return elem.style.opacity;
} else {
// Only attempt to get a value if one might exist
var match = elem.style.filter.match(/opacity=([^)]*)/);
return match ?
(parseFloat(match[1]) / 100) + "" :
"";
}
};
})();
window.onload = function () {
var div = document.getElementById("div");
// Alerts out '0.5'
alert(opacityStyle(div));
};
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div style="opacity:0.5;filter:alpha(opacity=50);" id="div"></div>
</body>
</html>