CSS IE vs safari woes...

[needlnerdz]

Ok.. so I really want to be a part of this whole clean code & web standards movement by using mostly CSS instead of tables for websites.. I'm just having trouble being convinced, when creating a simple site that views great in safari, firefox... but is completely messed up by IE 5 and sometimes 6+... as much as I would like to ignore this demographic, it is unfortunately the majority.

I have read up a bit on how to create two sets of rules.. one for IE to follow, one for the others.. I have not yet played much with implementing it, as I do not have IE 5 on a PC to really see what difference it's making... but I was curious if anyone out there knew of any programs, applets, tricks for automating bits of rules/code into the IE safe version? It seems plausible for a program that could look at how you coded it, understand that that way of writing it is for the Safari/firefox browser.. and create the secondary code for IE around it?? If it doesn't exist.. it sounds like a great way for a programmer to claim rights to the next big web-tech patent?

Here's an example of a site that seems to load fine in any web app I use on a mac.. but there were numerous complaints about it's rendering on a PC.. using IE of either 5 or 6:

http://www.violadesign.com/

Thanks in advance for any guidance to the issue.

[mnkeybsness]

first: validate your site (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.violadesign.com)

then: figure out your IE issues.

[tominated]

try using this (http://www.danvine.com/iecapture/) if you want to see what IE users see. It is the first step to see what you have to change

[needlnerdz]

Ack... 23 errors.. thanks for the quick, builtin link for validation.. guess there are either some extra spaces in there before my > end tags... - wow and 71 errors for an actual content page of the site.. argh.. Hm I guess I will go through and try making some of these changes..

- Thanks for the IeCapture.. I tried that website a while back.. and I believe that it loaded just fine (going to try it again though), as that is viewing it with IE 7 (?) - unfortunately, I could not find a free website viewer for IE 6, which sadly still owns a huge (sickening) majority of the browsers out there:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

- thanks again for the responses thus far

[Mal]

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Woah, don't think I've seen that one before. Interesting to see the stats. Safari split off from the Mozilla numbers just this past month, yet the percentages don't add up from the month before, so either there was a .6% increase between them that month, or they had something else counted wrong too. Most interesting was the Mac percentages though, as high as 3.8% (Sept 06) from only 1.8% (Mar 03). Impressive.

Re: the original question, I've found that the combination of validating and beta testing (just get some friends with IE, show them your screenshot, and ask them to check if it looks the same) seems to work well.

jW