Rodent Regatta

[7] Russ: How do you deal with the ’IE factor’ when building layouts in CSS?

Molly: I start drinking earlier and earlier in the day!

Seriously, my preferred method is to design to the ideal. I develop in Mozilla first, and then determine how to re-fit for IE 6.0 and other browsers. This might not be the best solution for everyone, but I find that it helps me because I can create really solid CSS and then study which workarounds and hacks I have to employ to achieve results for IE. Then, using strategies such as placing hacks in individual CSS files and then importing the hacks into my primary CSS document allows me to remove the hack the moment it’s no longer needed. I simply remove one line of CSS from the main CSS document and delete the CSS document containing the hack, moving ever closer to the original clean, idealistic CSS.

from Ten Questions for Molly Holzschlag

No matter how much I read about web standards, web design and what processes people use to do their work, I learn something new nearly every day. As many times as I’ve heard about the problems of IE6, I think Molly’s interview explains the issues as well as any. If you’re not a regular visitor to her site, take a look. Oh yeah, more books are on the way!