Q:

IE8 :nth-child and :before

Here is my CSS:
#nav-primary ul li:nth-child(1) a:after { }

Works everywhere now (used this on my website) except Internet Explorer 8...
Is there possibly a way to use nth-child in IE8?
This is the worst version of this browser... nothing works as it should and I can't find a way to fix it.
@edit:
Simplified version of what I want to achieve: http://jsfiddle.net/LvvNL/. Its just a start. CSS will be more complicated so I need to be able to aim every one of this links. Hope adding classes to every link is not the only way
@edit2:
I've just noticed that  
#nav-primary ul li:nth-child(1) a {
    border-top: 5px solid #144201;
}

IS actually working in IE8! But this:
#nav-primary ul li:nth-child(1) a:after {
    content: "Text";
    display: block;
    font-weight: normal;
    padding-top: 5px;
    font-size: 12px;
    color: #666;
}

is NOT working. So what is going on?

A:

You can (ab)use the adjacent sibling combinator (+) to achieve this with CSS that works in IE7/8.
See: http://jsfiddle.net/thirtydot/LvvNL/64/
/* equivalent to li:nth-child(1) */
#nav-primary ul li:first-child a {
    border-top: 5px solid red;
}
/* equivalent to li:nth-child(2) */
#nav-primary ul li:first-child + li a {
    border-top: 5px solid blue;
}
/* equivalent to li:nth-child(3) */
#nav-primary ul li:first-child + li + li a {
    border-top: 5px solid green;
}​

You cannot emulate more complex variations of :nth-child() such as :nth-child(odd) or :nth-child(4n+3) with this method.

A:

IE9.js solves this and other related problems!
:nth-child(odd) and :nth-child(even) work with this.
Usage:
<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<script src="http://ie7-js.googlecode.com/svn/version/2.1(beta4)/IE9.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

A:

Try pairing Selectivizr with NMWatcher. That's what I do on all my sites to get good pseudo selector support across all browsers. FWIW if you're using a lot of HTML5 elements then it might be worth using v 1.2.3 of NMWatcher rather than 1.2.4, I had a selectivizr issue with a site today which I couldn't seem to fix, then I moved to 1.2.3 and it worked fine.

