why might a div appear lower in FF and Safari than in IE

I am working on a site and its something i am slowly fixing and improving for a client, however some minor cosmetic stuff has to be done asap without taking my time to rework the entire content and layout to improve and validate the css

I would like to know if anyone has encountered this problem

When positioning a div element using css it appears fine in IE the latest version, the top of the parent div it is within

But in both Firefox and Safari it appears a good half inch or so lower

Can anyone explain why this is and more to the point, what may need changing to make it work in all those browsers

Thanks

Without seeing the page, it's impossible to know why any particular problem might arise. Does the page have a complete <!DOCTYPE> statement so that the page will be rendered in Standards Compliance Mode? Post a link to the page.

For easier debugging in FF use firebug and play with the style directly on page. Usually for such problems the reasons are margins and padding. Make a border for the div for easier debugging and I'm sure you will find the reason yourself.