IE 5.1.6 layers issue

[harleyfarley]

After spending all day sorting out the unwanted horizontal scrollbars on my website for IE5 Mac, I thought I'd download IE 5.1.6 and try my site.
Arrrghhh! The layers were all over the place in terms of vertical position and z-index. What happened? I've tried downloading another version and got the same result.

<snip>

[edited by: Macguru at 12:59 am (utc) on Feb. 6, 2003]
[edit reason] sig removed [/edit]

[Macguru]

Hi harleyfarley,

Welcome to the board and to the The Macintosh Webmaster forum.

Sorry but we do not do sites reviews at WebmasterWorld.

Please validate both your HTML and CSS files, this can potentially save you from headheaches. IE on Mac is quite picky about it.

Here are the free tools to do so.

[validator.w3.org...]

[jigsaw.w3.org...]

[harleyfarley]

Thanks for the links.
Firsly let me tell you that I am NOT looking for anyone to review my site thank you, I put the address because I thought someone might be able to tell if I had done something obviously wrong in the code.
The validator will be a very useful tool for me in the future, but at the moment I don't think I understand enough about HTML to use it properly. Indeed, I didn't hand code my document merely designed it in DW. It seems that most of the errors that the validator has found (and that's a lot!) are the ones that DW has written.
Do I really need to delve into this, this deeply? It seems to work fine on IE5 Mac and all other browsers on PC. So far IE 5.1.6 Mac is the only one I have problems with. I was just wondering if anybody knew of any known bugs or problems with it?

[Macguru]

>>So far IE 5.1.6 Mac is the only one I have problems with.

Did you check your site with Opera and Mozilla for windows for a second opinion?

Code validation will save you a lot of headhaches, believe me. You start with valid code then you still have to deal with browser specific bugs on top.

>>Do I really need to delve into this, this deeply?

If you want your site to display right in all browsers, yes.

There is plenty of usefull tips in the browser and CSS forum's libraries.

[harleyfarley]

I've only breifly searched the suggested forums but still can't find what I'm looking for. But if my site displays properly in IE5 shouldn't it display ok in a later version?
(am downloading mozilla and opera pc and mac to try those as i write)

[harleyfarley]

Mozilla OK.
Exactly the same problem on opera (windows) as on IE5.1.6 Mac!

[harleyfarley]

OK I am trying hard to validate my site using the link you provided. There are two errors that arise that I don't understand.
One being; Line 4, column 5: document type does not allow element "HEAD" here. Where else does it go?
The other being in the javascript my freespace server adds to the top of the page, which I can't get at.
Also I am not entirely sure which version of HTML I should be validating for. I have tried 4.01 transitional or should it be 4.01 strict, not using frames so havn't done 4.01 frameset (is that the relation?)
Please somebody help. I am willing and desperate to learn.

[harleyfarley]

I have finally solved my layout problem by pure accident. If anyone is interested the problem was caused by having the layers named "layer1","layer2","layer3",etc. By renaming them anything else solved the problem.
So I would like to thank everyone for all their extremely desciptive reply's and all their considerable time and effort in helping me with this problem.
Maybe being able to post my url would have given people chance to see this most basic error.
Thanks.

[Macguru]

Hi harleyfarley,

Glad you finally figured out what the problem was. Feel welcomed to have a the Browser [webmasterworld.com] and CSS [webmasterworld.com] forums libraries.

You can find the best tips and good tutorials to get started in there.