Stranger than strange IE6 Issue?

inconsistent ie6 issue

[mattpone]

We have a very strange IE6 issue.

The site displays fine in all other browsers, but occassionally in IE6 it sees the whole main content div as too wide and pushes it under the sidebar.

Initially it looked like a width issue so we reduced everything but to no avail.

I've installed an IE6 Emulator and get this problem only every 5 or 6 clicks but when I hit refresh, the page displays fine again?

A colleague has IE6 installed on his laptop for testing and has also installed the same emulator on his pc but the problem doesnt show up on either.

I wouldnt mind too much but its not displaying correctly for our client (a typical old school IE6 user!)

Can anyone suggest what could be causing this or why IE6 would perform differently on different PCs?

Many thanks

[tedster]

I remember having that issue once a while back, at least it was quuite similar. I never did figure out all the details and triggers, but I remember resolving it with a simple kind of css hack - body:width:95%;.

[penders]

...why IE6 would perform differently on different PCs?

Different OS? Browser plugins?

Do you use relatively positioned container elements? I seem to recall a problem if you have a parent (of a parent?) that is also relative, but other containers in the 'container' hierarchy are not?!

[swa66]

Get a virtual machine like vmware or microsoft's virtual PC, and run the real thing. Emulators, stand alone installations etc. aren't reliable enough to produce the same result as the real thing.

Other than that IE6 really has had it's time: advise your customer to use a better browser.

[Seb7]

I've refreshed the page several times in IE6 and cant see any problem.

You are missing some </ul> close tags, which is likely to cause some issues.

[mattpone]

thanks for all the reponses

sadly the emulator isnt at fault as the client is replicating this problem on their own pc

the problem seems to occur when you browse 2/3 pages from the navigation, but it does not affect all pc's with IE6 for some bizare reason?

I can't seem to see any missing </ul> tags in the code? Could you direct me please?
Many thanks

ps. ive started to install the banner from ie6update.com on sites now - to try and convince people to upgrade when they land on the site!

[tedster]

I can't seem to see any missing </ul> tags in the code? Could you direct me please?

W3C Validator - HTML [validator.w3.org]