How do I design so Firefox and IE look the same?

[thehelper]

Hi
what can I do to have firefox and ie display the same in a browser
They have slight differences
Is there anything i can add to my code to iron out these differences

thank

[DrDoc]

First of all -- are you using a full and valid doctype?

[thehelper]

I dont seem to have any doc type at the head of my pages
what should i put there.

[Tastatura]

This might help

[w3.org ]

[thehelper]

this is much more complicated than i realised

when i place the doc type at the top of my code it is fine in ie but every moves around in firefox

what do i do about this

I want to di it right

[graeme_p]

Validate your html and css.

The Firefox web developer extension has validation buttons AND a lot of other useful stuff.

I would suggest testing in multiple browsers as you go. It sounds too late for you do that in this case.

I have taken to working mostly in Firefox (because of the web developer extension and for standards compliance) and testing in Opera, Konqueror and IE at regular intervals and whenever I make major changes.

The commonest problem is things breaking on IE that work on everything else, but there are bugs in the other browsers as well.

[MatthewHSE]

You will probably never get everything to render *exactly* the same cross-browser, unless you have a very simple layout. But you can normally (if not always) get close enough.

The issue is to learn how each browser renders the same things, determine how close they actually have to be, and code your pages accordingly.

[thehelper]

Thanks for all your help

The most curious one for me is the amount of space around a form or java script

very different in fire fox or ie

any work around for this

thanks

[DrDoc]

You should always set the margin and padding yourself, as browser defaults are not only bound to be different, but also subject to change.

* {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

Put that at the top of your stylesheet. Then manually apply whatever margin/padding you want for each element type.