Pages that display differently on different browser

How to debug that?

[paolodina]

Sorry in advance if my question can't strictly be considered as a specific css problem, but probably here is a good place to ask: I think the problem I'm experiencing could be a css problem, as I'm not much confident with css.

Using browsershots.org I have verified that an html page of my site, in html strict, is shown differently depending on which browser render it. So far so good, this is not so rare..

The problem I'm facing is that I'm not able to find which is the origin of this mis-behaviour.

What I have done:

* check the html correctness against w3c html validator. [passed]
* check the css correctness against w3c css validator. [passed]
* used different doctypes (transitional and strict). [nothing changes]
* checked css contents and browser compatibility on quirksmode. [all seems to be ok]

Now, it is the 3rd day I'm on this issue, I'd really like to understand what is going wrong.

As I can't believe that it is not possible to fix the issue, I'd be glad to know if you could you suggest something else to check/verify by myself, and generally, how is it possible to debug css in this kind of situations.

A (big) thanks!

[Robin_reala]

My usual tactic in browser debugging goes like this:

1) Make a minimal testcase that still exhibits the same behaviour that you're seeing in all browsers you're concerned with.

2) Start commenting stuff out to see if you can find out the exact line that's giving you grief.

3) Ascertain the code (or combination of code) that's the real issue.

4) Google for that problem.

5) If searching doesn't help then post on WebmasterWorld your reduced testcase and the line of code that's causing the issue to see if other people have had the same problem.

6) If that doesn't work, surreptitiously remove that feature :)

[SuzyUK]

also develop the page, make it look how you want it to in a CSS compliant browser (FireFox and/or Opera) first then see what breaks in IE.. most of the issues with IE are well documented and can be fixed quite easily.