I'm new to the world of CSS, but while browsing the other day I came across Dean Edwards IE7 script (http://www.charlescooke.me.uk/web/lab_notes/ie7_script.html) I was just curious as to what people think of this? And is it an effective tool in combating IE issues?
Yes. A lot of people use this and, iirc, he now has one that fixes IE8 so it can run more like the other more modern browsers. The only downside is the weight of the script but I haven't looked at it in quite a while. However, with all the differences between all the IE versions, I just recently thought I would look into it myself again.
It depends on what you want to use his script for. I don't use his script, and instead write around most of IE's issues... however one nasty problem with IE7 is, it still ignores :focus, and for accessibility reasons you may really need to have IE react to your :focus styles. The script will take care of that for you. In general, the layout problems can be dealt with in CSS. You'd maybe want to look at the size of the script vs the size of any extra CSS you need to get IE working the way you want, and decide based on that.