Why can’t browsers all agree on one set of rules – it would make my life soooo much easier. Last week I decided to sort out my template for my ePortfolio that I have to design for a college assignment. So, I’d been playing around with ideas all afternoon and found a good tutorial for a 3 column layout at Alist Apart. I finally got it working (I must have missed a comma or something because for ages it wouldn’t work at all). In the end I threw in the towel (before the laptop went out of the window) and started again from scratch - Hurrah, a lovely 3 column web page. At least the beginnings of one…Anyway, I’d been doing my testing in the wonderful Firefox and suddenly thought ‘hey better try it out in IE’. I’ve got IE7 on my laptop and I knew I’d included a work around for IE6 in my CSS so hoped for the best.It wasn’t to be. A whole column disappeared. Not just wandered off somewhere else on the screen but totally vanished!

The panic started to set in, especially when I went back to the article and found the comments had been closed. However, the public comments saved the day; I found a link to an IE7 work around. Phew - I was just thinking that a whole afternoon of work had gone.

I know; use a ready made, fully designed, cross browser tested, input info and go sort of template I hear you say, there are loads available. But I’m a bit of a masochist and like to make things difficult for myself lol. Plus, if I build it myself (well most of it) I know what’s where and so on. Maybe next time I will though…for my sanity if nothing else. Of course, it’s yet to be tested in IE6, Opera and the other too-numerous-to-mention available browsers. Yikes.