Site not right in IE5 or IE6

[pb4123]

My site is not showing right in IE5 or IE6.

Can anyone let me know why and is there anything I can do about it?

Thanks

[edited by: phranque at 8:58 pm (utc) on Nov. 7, 2009]
[edit reason] No urls, please. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], pb4123!

ie5 & ie6 are known far and wide to have issues with standards compliance.
do you have a document type declaration?
is all of your html and css validated?

what percentage of your visitors are using IE5?

[StoutFiles]

Your best option is to have an alternate css file for IE6 and below. Use a conditional comment to check the browser.

[jbinbpt]

what percentage of your visitors are using IE5?

People that are stuck with IE5 or IE6 for whatever reason, know that sites look malformed. They are used to it. Make sure you have enough IE5/6 traffic to warrant making changes.

[phranque]

i'm definitely not a css expert but it might help if you start with something like this to help get things on equal footing among the browsers:

body * {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

(at least that's what i practice...)

[pb4123]

Thanks everyone for your replies :)

I have checked the validation etc and it seems fine?

Also tried the Body padding and that didn't solve it.

We have enough people visiting using 6 to want to sort it out.

Any other ideas?

If I know what CSS would work for IE6 then I would be happy to do a second style sheet.

Thanks

[tedster]

tried the Body padding and that didn't solve it.

Did you try not just "body" but "body *"? That should set every child of the body element to zero padding.

You also may find some help from IE Conditional Comments [webmasterworld.com] - they were created for this kind of situation.

[pb4123]

Oh...no I just did body..Whats body * ? What do I add and where?

Thanks.

Thanks for the link, will have a look.

[xclamationdesign]

Put it in your stylesheet but make sure it replaces any other body reference in your stylesheet and make sure you keep the asterisk (*).

eg.

body * {padding: 0;
margin: 0;}

[pb4123]

Thanks for letting me know.

Unfortunately this still didn't solve it :(

[Fotiman]

Can you provide more details? What sort of problems are you seeing? Can you include (as little as possible) code that might replicate the issue?