Since I'm about 95% complete with the blog section and it's 100% valid in XHTML transitional mode, I decided to do the compatibility test across three browsers: Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. I must say, for the most part, it looked fine in all three browsers. However, as usual, there were a few discrepancies between them.

Safari and Firefox seemed to do most of the right things and I was quickly able to diagnose and fix some of the differences between these two browsers. Then came the brother from another mother, Internet Explorer. Please, can someone tell me why IE hasn't been updated since Caesar was fighting on the battlefields of Rome? Thank god for alternative browsers or I'd really be struggling with designing with 'standards' in mind. If you're a web designer to any degree, I'm sure you fought plenty of battles with IE. It has a strangely unique way of saying 'Your design kung foo is no good for me'. Can you say box model hack or maybe you've tried to use custom fades that require a background color for some unknown reason.

The good news is, Internet Explorer 7.0 is set to debut sometime this year and I can't wait. I've been following the IE7 Blog and it looks like Microsoft's developers are really going all out in terms of functionality, security, features, and standards compliance. While I haven't tried the new version yet, I must say that I'm really looking forward to giving it a shot. This new version will hopefully relieve some of the pain being inflicted on me while trying to design for IE 6.x.

Update 9:24PM Monday, February 20, 2006

So like I mentioned I was fixing some CSS compatibility issues in IE. Well, I ran into the infamous Peek-a-boo bug, which caused a fair share of four-letter words to exit my mouth numerous times. I'll leave it up to an exercise of you, the reader, to learn more about this quirk in IE. Just visit the site above in IE 6.x and start hovering over the links. You will quickly see the strangeness I'm referring to and why it could cause so many headaches.