I built a site for a small business and it looks great and they love it. Everything is fine up until we notice that older versions of Internet Explorer (8 and older) can't view the site. It looks completely messed up. I used Bootstrap which uses CSS3 and HTML5 elements. What can I do about this? I don't want to remake the entire website.
I dont know how exactly but there you can find informations about that http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13924493/how-to-make-bootstrap-responsive-layout-work-on-ie8 <!--[if lt IE 9]> <script src="http://html5shiv.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script> <![endif]-->
You most likely haven't included shiv.js in your markup. By the way, that's just another reason why no sane person should ever use HTML5. It forces you to systematically add a couple of k's of scripting BEFORE even THINKING about writing your markup. But wait, aren't we supposed to enhance the markup with scripting only once it's completely finished? As a matter of fact, we are... There goes your progressive enhancement. My advice: lose that HTML5 garbage, and write proper xHTML1/HTML4 strict markup. And bootstrap??? Bad, bad idea.
What wiicker95 said +1000 GET. The steaming pile of manure known as HTML 5, mated to idiotic halfwit garbage like bootstrap is just asking for /FAIL/ -- between likely using two to ten times as much markup as you actually need, mated to a rubbish framework that by it's very nature relies on presentational use of classes ... that it works in any browser properly would surprise me. There's a reason I don't advocate the use of EITHER of those technologies. CSS3 is fine if you can live with older browsers not showing the fancy bits, but HTML 5 and CSS frameworks like bootcrap? Forget it. Though, can we see what you've done? If you've got that garbage on there, you likely have dozens of other issues too.