Browsers and The Complex Litigator on SquareSpace

A reader alerted me to an issue that I had not thought to examine after moving from hosting on TypePad to hosting here on SquareSpace.  There appears to be one major browser variant that cannot correctly render this blog.  Care to guess which browser and version?

After utilizing a very handy tool from Adobe called BrowserLab, it appears that Internet Explorer 6 and earlier versions of IE break this blog.  After looking at the way in which the page breaks in IE 6, and having experimented with building a personal website that was "standards compliant," I saw at least one source of the trouble.  At this point, if you are not an aspiring techie, please put your fingers in your ears and say, "La, la, la, la, I'm not listening to you."  IE 6 does not handle padding in the same manner as all other browsers.  Padding is a measure of the space around content that is inside an html container (margins are a measure of space outside an element).  Because IE 6 adds up padding measurements differently, when content is spaced with padding inside fixed outer containers (like a page with a set width), stuff breaks.

SquareSpace no longer supports IE 6 (and earlier).  If you happen to be working somewhere that still requires you to use IE 6, talk to the IT people.  At least move up to IE 7.  You might also give Firefox or Google's Chrome a try.  They are standards compliant and render this blog correctly.  If some other browser is breaking the layout (overlapping the columns or other obviously unintended results), use the contact form to send me a message about it, and I will put the excellence of the SquareSpace support team to the test.