just to say, i got some brilliant help on this from bruno who is here:
https://www.brunildo.org/test/
2) For some entries the full page (with comments) has the whole central part moved down and to the left. This is caused by the presence of long urls in some comment which cause IE6 to enlarge the whole central part. Your “A startling lack…” entry is currently suffering this problem. A quick cure is the addition, at the end of your css, of:
.commentlist { word-wrap: break-word; }
This is a proprietary IE rule, which will force the wrapping of those long urls, so avoing them to break the layout.
also the page went wrong with an image that was too big for the central column. bruno sorted me out again, like a god among men
Yes, any “too wide” content causes that effect (the page is not really broken, but the main content is moved down, and becomes difficult to read due to the colors of the background.)
You could try this:
.main { margin-right: -400px; }
It should save that page with the big picture, and maybe other similar cases: it sort of negate the effect of the wide content, telling the browser that the right side is more to the left than what’s true. But without more careful testing it’s difficult to say if it won’t have any bad side effects. You can better write it in this way
* html .main { margin-right: -400px; }
so that it is hidden to non-IE browers that do not need it.
i’m posting this here to answer my own question for archive purposes in time honoured geek forum tradition.
thanks bruno whoever you are!