I did a little research this morning and found some potential fixes to the fixed positioning problems under IE. There is Eric Bednarz’s solution, which includes references to using IE’s conditional comments to load appropriate CSS styles. And then there is a thread form 2003 on WebmasterWorld.com that gives specific code to address the issue. Apparently this issue has been around for awhile, as most of the comments I’ve seen on the subject were from 2002 and 2003. Strange that Eric Meyer doesn’t discuss it more prominently in his texts, however. Maybe I just missed it.

The good news is that the problem is addressable using ordinary CSS styles and little else, though the conditional comments are a bit of a hack. I’m trying to avoid using Javascript for any of my pages related to styles. I think Javascript should be used for application computing and not styling.

I’ve chosen to use the code from WebMasterWorld.com’s forums to try and solve my problems with the CSS I’ve created for my WP blog. Although it seems to work fine under Firefox under Linux, I have yet to try it out under Windows and IE. I don’t run Windows at work, so I’ll have to wait till I get home to test it. I’m also not too concerned if this doesn’t work in other or older browsers. Supporting IE5 and newer along with Firefox covers my target audience pretty well, though I supposed I should make sure Safari works too. I just don’t have access (anywhere) to a Mac.