Sidebar no longer shows in IE

One of the main reasons for this, if width isn’t an issue (oftentimes it isn’t), is the floated elements displayed side-by-side aren’t diaplyed inline. Thus, adding display:inline to your floated elements will often fix this problem.

#content {
float : left;
width : somepx;
display : inline;
}
#sidebar {
float : right;
width : somepx;
display : inline;
}

Mike

Thanks for your reply. I will try both your suggestions.
Edith!

Hi all –
I’ve looked through the forum pretty extensively and can’t seem to narrow down what might be my problem. Yesterday my right sidebar disappeared. I’ve seen all the posts on image sizes and how they affect layout etc. It’s only happening in IE6 as far as I know. Firefox seems fine. Could someone please suggest where I might start? Disclaimer: I also checked the W3C Validator — and it ain’t pretty.

Thanks
wowfeed.com

I see what you mean. Besides some of the sidebar going poof, I can’t even see anything in the footer..in IE6 that is.. =/

I’m not sure if it’s maybe a <div> or closing </div> problem or not…but, when you checked it with the W3C Validator site…did you use the: Show Source and Verbose Output options?

Here’s the link to it, using those two options. You should really care about the 49 errors though, because one of the 49 might be the culprit of why the sidebar isn’t showing. ??

When you get to that link I gave above, click on the “blue number” link, beside the word: Line, it will take you down the “source” of the page, right to where the “errors” are at.

Then fix them all accordingly..in your theme’s files, or maybe even within your Posts. Hopefully after fixing the errors, the sidebar will come back again in IE6. If it doesn’t, then report back here again lol..

spencerp

P.S. I really hate IE6, I just wish Microshit would stop using it and providing it. Just redirect everyone from their IE6 downloads page to the Firefox download page LoL!!

Thanks spencerp..I’m checking the supposed <div> tag errors and they all look fine so far. I’ll go through the rest in the morning. Thanks for the quick response.

P.S.- Couldn’t agree w/you more re: MSFT. I never realized how bad it was until I starting using firefox. Pitiful.

Thanks spencerp..I’m checking the supposed <div> tag errors and they all look fine so far. I’ll go through the rest in the morning. Thanks for the quick response.

No problem. =) I forgot to mention above though, which I edited it quick..to add that some of those errors might lay within your actual “posts” as well. Also, sometimes “extra long or lengthy” links, can screw stuff up too..

P.S.- Couldn’t agree w/you more re: MSFT. I never realized how bad it was until I starting using firefox. Pitiful.

Haha, sigh…yeah…damn Microsoft. Damn it to hell!!

spencerp

No luck yet…I checked the posts and some of the longer links to no avail. Any other ideas? Should I rebuild my sidebar from scratch, a piece at a time. And what’s the best way to accomplish that without fudging up the whole site.

Thanks in advance!

gdearing –

I’m actually seeing *extra* closing div tags, not missing ones. For example, there’s an extra one after the commented out section for some kind of script, after the first post on the page.

What you might want to do is View your source code, save it as a TXT file and delete all the content – leave all div’s intact. It helps muddle through all the tags if you’re not wading through a ton of content. Then you can see where the issues lie and fix them appropriately. ??

thanks doodlebee..probably an obvious question here. How the heck do I get to that edit. Do I perform the edit inside of the dashboard. I’ve looked there and I don’t see the <div> you’re referring to. Is there one of the PHP files I should get to in CPanel? Still no luck in IE6. Man, this is frustrating ;(

It’s not a <div> tag, it’s a *closing* div tag: </div> There’s several of them that are in there, closing out things that shouldn’t be closed. Here’s a sample taken directly from your source code. I’ve removed the actual content so you can see where the issues are:

<div id="page">
<div id="header" >
</div>
<hr />
<div class="content">
<div id="primary">
<div id="dynamiccontent"></div>
<div id="primarycontent"><div>
<!-- what are the two above divs for? there's nothing in them. -->
<div id="post-51" class="item entry">
<div class="itemhead"></div>
<div class="itemtext"><div>
</div>
<div><!-- End Technorati Tags --></div>
</div>
<!-- this div tag closes #primary -->
<!-- -->
</div>
<!-- This is currently closing your #content div, don't think it should be here. Anything after this will no longer be within your content section.-->
<div id="post-43" class="item entry"></div>
<!-- This closing div tag closes out the "post" area before there's even anything posted -->
<div class="itemtext">
<div align="center">
<div align="left"></div>
<div align="left"></div>
</div> <!-- why are these three divs here? -->
</div>
<!-- -->
</div>
<!-- this div is actually closing your #page div. Anything after if isn't even going to show up within your #page area -->
</div></div>
<!-- two more closing div tags - yet there's nothing *to* close as no divs tags are open anymore -->
<hr />
<div class="navigation">
<div class="left"></div>
<div class="right"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
</div>
<hr />
</div> <!-- again - nothing to close! -->

As you can see, there’s lots of extra closing div tags – at the point where I stopped (too long to post the whole darn thing here!) you’ve already closed yourself right out of your opening #page area.

As to *where* you need to make these changes? I don’t know. I don’t know this theme, I don’t know your setup, or what sections are in what files on your system. The template, however, *definitely* needs to be edited, because there’s mega screwups here. if I were to guess, I’d say start with your index.php file and examine your loop, your sidebar.php file, header.php file – there’s opbviously extra div tags placed within your template where they do not need to be, and it’s causing a lot of issues.

Thanks very much doodlebee…you’ve been a trooper. I found an older sidebar I had saved and published it. Voila, back to an earlier version of my 3 column layout. Now, back to rebuilding the sidebar very slowly and testing in IE as I go along. Can you confirm how it looks in IE 6?

Thanks again for our help.

Hi. So it seems this is the thread to post about errors with the sidebar in IE. I’ve tried looking at a variety of different sites with little success. My website (albeit very simple… I’m trying to learn as I go so apologies for shoddy decisions), works fine in firefox and Opera. However, when opened in IE, my side bar drops below my content. My website is https://www.geocities.com/matthewefyffe/rbmain.html and I ran it through validator, fixing all of the errors that my writing made (I can’t do anything about what geocities forces in there though).

I will include my css file at the top of the html so it can be viewed by the source (i’m assuming that’s how it’s done?). Thanks for any help as this has been bugging me all day.

EDit: in fact, while I’m at it… in opera, my white background for the page only extends to halfway below my text whereas in firefox and IE, my white background goes all the way to the bottom of the page. What would cause this to happen? And why in bloody hell can’t all browsers work the same :).

EDIT: Okay, sorry for bothering everyone.. it seems ot be working though i’m not sure why.

Though if anyone can explain why the background color of white stops short on any browser except IE it’d be much appreciated ??

SimpleMinded,
this is not a “general” support for any kind of website. We support only WordPress blogs here. So – based on the links – you have posted your questions in the wrong place. That site is not a WP blog. Sorry.

Ah sorry, moshu… I just googled sidebar and internet explorer and this was a result. You can delete my posts then… I didn’t mean to invade the forum.