My site works in IE7 but not IE6... help!

[tigger25143]

I'm sort of a newbie at web design... played around with it for years but I don't understand it a whole lot... so I'm hoping my problem isn't that complicated and I can fix it.
Here goes...

I have designed a website with Dreamweaver (pretty much using the WYSIWYG end but some coding too) with CSS. I'm a Mac user and everything tests fine in Safari and Firefox. I have checked the site on a couple of Windows PCs in IE7 the site looks fine, the same as on Safari and Firefox. But in IE6 things are looking odd.

First, my graphics with transparent backgrounds show up with a gray background. I'm using PNGs... if I change to GIF would that help?

Second, my main column on the page is spacing way, way down the page. I don't know what would be making it do that.

I hope someone can help and understand what I'm trying to explain :)

Thanks

[drhowarddrfine]

Without a link or the complete markup we can only guess. So, I'll guess :)

PNG transparency doesn't work on IE6, end of story.
It sounds like you are using floats. In IE, it will expand parent elements to contain floats but that's a bug and it shouldn't do that.

You are using modern web browsers Safari and Firefox to test your page, and that's the right way to go about it, but IE6 and IE7 are 10 years behind web standards so that's why you'll have to make adjustments/hacks for them. Fortunately, IE7 is at least somewhat better than IE6.

[tigger25143]

Thanks for the guess :)

I knew I didn't like IE!

I don't have the pages with me, I'm at work and my stuff is at home on my Macbook.

How would I go about 'adjusting' for IE? Or do you need to see the code to tell me how to fix it?

Thanx

[snakeye]

Without a link or the complete markup we can only guess. So, I'll guess :)

PNG transparency doesn't work on IE6, end of story.
It sounds like you are using floats. In IE, it will expand parent elements to contain floats but that's a bug and it shouldn't do that.

You are using modern web browsers Safari and Firefox to test your page, and that's the right way to go about it, but IE6 and IE7 are 10 years behind web standards so that's why you'll have to make adjustments/hacks for them. Fortunately, IE7 is at least somewhat better than IE6.
Actually no, not end of story. There are hacks that will fix PNG transparency in IE6, I'm sure there are a bunch of threads about it in the css section of this forum. ;)

[drhowarddrfine]

Yes, you're right. I forgot about the hacks but I've never used them either.

[tigger25143]

Thanks for the info

I have fixed the PNG transparency problem!

I'm still trying to figure out the float problem.
I've done some research on it and thus far none of the "fixes" have worked.

But thanks for the assistance and pointing me in the right direction!

:D