Grappling With the Inadequacies of IE

I have spent most of today playing with the CSS for my website. I thought I was doing quite well until now with no major hiccups until I switched my browser to Internet Explorer. Most of the differences were quite subtle but some of them where horribly different to Firefox's rendering.

The biggest problem was my <ul> elements that I'd used for my nav bar and links menu. I had set these to display: block-inline which works fine in both Mozilla and Webkit based browsers. Thankfully, there is a plethora of resources online regarding CSS quirks and bugs in IE and I found a way round it whilst keeping my so far semantically correct CSS.

The next big step came when I started using other people's widgets. I hate Javascript which is a shame because it can do some remarkable things. Compared to other languages however, it is rather infuriating to try and track down the bugs. Simple spelling mistakes that would result in errors in most languages are simply ignored and treated as correct but with no result. I have been using the Last.fm records script that produces a really nice view of your Last.fm feed with the option to show the different feeds such as loved tracks or favourite albums. Of course, once I had it, the CSS had to be altered so that it matched my page. This is where the difficulty lies - I hadn't written the code for it and so I had to spend a while working out what each bit did. This was made more difficult not having access to the HTML which would normally allow you to see the structure and thus what the CSS referred to.

Thankfully someone recommended the Web Developer Toolbar addon for Firefox which is invaluable in these situations because it allows you to edit the CSS live without having to reload the page after each change and also lets you outline the current element helping you track down the countless divs and spans that these widgets get wrapped up in.

I've also started getting back into cycling since I've had access to my bike. I think I am so thankful for the relative lack of hills around here that I am making the most of them before my return to Sheffield. I've found a nice route around New Hall walk which is part of the national cycling route and takes me on a good mile or so round trip without too many roads. You can even get into Sutton town centre almost without going on any roads which is wonderful for these lovely sunny days we've been having recently.