My site has a hand full of IE6 fixes - RE help

I got a fright when i saw IE6 on my bosses laptop and now I have to figure out how to fix a few problems

Site not centred in the browser
One div is pushing the other down
Flash not loading using swfobject.js
pngs not transparent using ie6fix.js

got a screener of my site in IE6



Any advice would be appreciated have been trying on my own using google to fix these things but have had no luck so far - thanks guys

 

The first point to make:

One div is pushing the other down

Take a look at the padding or the margin of the columns. IE6 really doesn't like respond well to either, but particularly padding.

Site not centred in the browser -

Without seeing the code I'm not sure what you have done.

I always go for #wrapper { margin : 0 auto; }

With the wrapper div being just one in from the body

As for ie6fix.js, wouldn't you try the AlphalmageLoader fix.

You can find details of it here:

www.tinyurl.com/594aps

 

#1 might be caused by no or incomplete doctype-- or ANYTHING, even a comment, before the doctype. This would put IE6 into Retarded Mode (er, Quirks Mode) where one famous problem is, the site would center if the body had text-align: center on it (the old centering for the Broken Box Model in IE5 and below).
#2 could be a few things, but generally IE6 thinks there's not enough room for both of those boxes to fit in a row. Is the sidebar floated? Does it have a right margin? If IE6 is doubling that margin (double-margin float bug) then it'll do Float Drop. But IE6 can also have other bugs-- 3px jog (when a float is next to a non-float, it adds three pixels in between the two) or simply bad math (IE6 can add 50% and 50% and get 101%) can make it seem like there's not enough room for those two boxes to sit side-by-side.

I dunno what's up with Flash. Flash is evil and needs to die. : )

I don't use PNGfix either...
however the thought has occured to me... sometimes Flash is loaded by Javascript, and PNGfix is Javascript-- possibly you are looking at how your page looks when someone doesn't have Javascript on? Something you as a web developer should be testing for anyway... but is it possible your boss has no JS, or a script blocker, or going through a script-blocking firewall, or the security settings too high on the browser? Any of those might be it.

I also see your menu doesn't fit. As if the ul itself isn't wide enough. This could be from any of the floating bugs I mentioned above,
or
if IE is in retards mode, it uses the Borked Box Model, meaning it fux0rs with all your sizes. So any side padding added to any blocks squeeze the blocks smaller inside, making less room for stuff.

You don't have one of those XHTML "prologue" thingies on your page, do you? The <?xml bullshit ?> line? If you do, remove it. You don't need it. It's for real XML documents, which IE can't deal with anyway, so lose it : )

Your lack of code means this is as far as I can go. But you can find lots about those bugs I mentioned above-- you could be hitting all of them : ) They are very popular and there is a lot of info out there about them.

Be careful with PNGfix on links. Continue testing that they are still clickable in IE6 when the transparent images do appear. This is a popular problem.