width of things in ie

as compared to mozilla or opera

[randomuser]

why does internet explorer make all the widths of my divs and tables weird? they align perfectly in opera and mozilla, but they're way off in ie. is there a way to fix it without making two completely different pages and using browser detection?

i'm using internet explorer 5.5... maybe it's fixed in version 6? i tried to upgrade, but it crashed alot so i had to downgraded. i swear that browser is a pain.

[justa]

I'm not 100% but I think it might have something to do with the box model [w3.org].
This article [alistapart.com] might be of assistance.

[Crescendo]

I noticed my divs are all badly spaced until I added the XHTML Transitional DTD. (Avoid the XML declaration on line 1 or IE will ignore the DTD, and screw up the divs again.)

[papabaer]

Avoiding the proper rendering is not the solution: designing in a manner where the BOX MODEL errors of MSIE can be circumvented is the answer.

Do a site search for css box model to find numerous previous threads on this topic.

By all means, study the W3C description of the Box Model: [w3.org...]

[randomuser]

thanks crescendo, that was my problem.