The problems with my CSS layout under Windows XP – Firefox and IE – had to do with positioning. In the case of IE, the side menu bars needed to be placed with position: absolute (they still need to be moved to be direct children of the body element in order to remain fixed, I think) instead of position: fixed. That required a little trickery with conditional comments and a second css file specifically for IE.

The Firefox problem was more obscure. The problem had to do with a trick I found on one of the WP CSS Tutorial sites that suggested moving the text of the header anchor off page with text-indent: -500em. This works but on XP Firefox also moved the header box with it (and possibly the background image too though I’m not sure about that yet). The fix was to change the indent to only -100em, though this may not work right on wider screens. Mine are only 1024 pixels wide. I’ll have to try it on a bigger monitor someday.

There is still a problem that the header background is white under IE until you place the mouse over it once. Then it displays correctly. Minor annoyance and since IE really isn’t my true target audience, its not worth fixing (unless someone explains how to do it).

So the major bugs are fixed, though the results are not exactly as I’d like: the white box in the header under IE and the side menus scroll under IE. But the pages are completely viewable. I also fixed the border being displayed around paragraphs under IE. Again, that was with the extra CSS file for IE that overrode the border option used for those paragraphs on other browsers.

Anyway, that project is as done as it needs to be for now. Now I’ve gotta get that first article done for Tux Magazine ASAP.