Monday, November 2, 2009

• IE 6 Layout Problems Fixed

I periodically check to make sure my site loads properly in other browsers. My blog did not look right in IE 6. Although Internet Explorer 6 is an outdated browser, many visitors appear to still be using it. Even some government computers still have IE 6 installed. Because a significant number of visitors are still using IE 6, I figured I had better investigate and fix one problem with my layout.

Here's what was happening. The sidebar on the far right of the page was getting shifted down and out of alignment with the rest of the site. After doing some searching, it appears IE 6 does not render certain Blogger layouts properly to begin with. That's the price you pay for using an outdated browser.

However, I wanted to make sure this was the case, so I fiddled around with my template.

Being a Mac user on an equally outdated PPC system, I don't have access to a PC running IE 6 to do any tests. I have to resort to third party browser preview services like NetRenderer and Browsershots. Under IE 7, IE 8, and Firefox for Windows, my blog showed up fine. Under Firefox and Safari for Mac OS X, everything looked fine too.

So after diving into my template, I checked the sidebar width settings. Nope. That wasn't it. Being the tinkerer that I am, I expanded the width of my outer wrapper. Low and behold, that fixed it.

Hopefully visitors see what I see now.