IE6 compatibility help

hi, i'm sort of new to web design. i used to do a little back before CSS and now i'm trying to learn more modern techniques

i'm having problems making pages IE6 compatible. they look perfect in firefox/safari/IE7, but in IE6 there are always small layout problems -- like small spaces where there should not be spaces and little things like that. my pages validate in XHTML and CSS, but i seem to need to just figure out IE6. looking for maybe a guide or tutorial on why IE6 sucks and how to fix it

thanks!

There are numerous problems with IE6 and it's hard to keep track of them all along with their respective solutions. A good rule of thumb is that IE6 often has support for a function, but interprets it in a wrong way. Apart from that, it also has some quirks that can be avoided by resetting the default value. Using "position: relative;" can solve some problems, for instance.

For a list of some common bugs, you can go to positioniseverything and look it up. On their main page you can also find lists of bugs in other browsers as well as good ways of solving them.

If you have a specific problem, it can often be solved by asking in this forum. Just include a link to the site and people will most probably look into it within a few hours.

Quick fixes that work
Set body{margin:0; padding:0} as the first thing you do, as browsers have different defaults.
Set a doctype - html 4.01 Strict, to avoid quirks mode.
Don't set margins and padding on divs, set them on the items inside the div instead.

PS you did some web design before CSS - that means you did it back in 1996? Wow. A web pioneer.

Originally Posted by Dr John Quick fixes that work Set body{margin:0; padding:0} as the first thing you do, as browsers have different defaults. Set a doctype - html 4.01 Strict, to avoid quirks mode. Don't set margins and padding on divs, set them on the items inside the div instead. PS you did some web design before CSS - that means you did it back in 1996? Wow. A web pioneer.

haha, it was probably 2000 or 2001. i guess CSS was around back then. It must not have been as widely used when i dabbled into webdesign, because I remembered using tables, and i think that was the prefered method when I was trying to learn.

Thanks for all the help. I used the margin/padding default trick and read more about the box model and how IE6 interprets it a bit differently, and about a couple of general "hacks" to use. In short, my pages now look the same in IE6