The jQuery .show() method always falls back to "display: block" by default. This breaks certain elements in standard compliant browsers: table elements will not display correctly in Firefox if these get "display: block", and span/a elements somehow failed to display in Konqueror 3.5.8 when they are hidden from a global CSS file before (using "display: none").

The following code is an example how this can be fixed. In Internet Explorer, assigning an unsupported value to .display will cause an error, hence the fallback to display: block below. This has been tested to work, it only needs to be incorporated into jQuery.

try {
	// Try standard compliant value first.
	// This list is incomplete but contains the mostly used elements.
	switch( element.tagName ) {
		// Special cases
		case 'TBODY': element.style.display = 'table-row-group'; break;
		case 'THEAD': element.style.display = 'table-header-group'; break;
		case 'TFOOT': element.style.display = 'table-footer-group'; break;
		case 'COL':   element.style.display = 'table-column-group'; break;
		case 'TH':    element.style.display = 'table-cell'; break;
		case 'TD':    element.style.display = 'table-cell'; break;
		case 'TR':    element.style.display = 'table-row'; break;
		case 'LI':    element.style.display = 'list-item'; break;
 
		// Inline elements
		case 'SPAN':
		case 'A':
		case 'IMG':
			element.style.display = 'inline';
			break;
 
		// Block elements
		default:
			element.style.display = 'block';
	}
}
catch(e) {
	// Fallback for Internet Explorer when display value is unsupported.
	element.style.display = 'block';
}

This fix makes workarrounds like $(el).show().css("display", "inline") obsolete.

Thanks.