Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / CSS / May 2008

I'm having a problem with the CSS on the website I am developing. A div that
works perfectly fine in IE7, FF, and Opera doesn't appear at all in IE6.

Now, I realize that I could simply post a link to the site and someone here
will likely look at it for about 30 seconds and tell me what's wrong.
However, I'd like to be as self-sufficient as I can be so I would _really_
appreciate some guidance on the best way to find this problem for myself.

Can anyone give me some general guidelines for debugging CSS? How do I
figure out which of umpteen properties is causing a given effect?

When I write CSS, I start out with something I've found online that does
fairly close to what I want to do. Then, I keep tweaking it until it does
exactly what I want to do. As a result, I don't always understand what each
and every property does. I try to change only one property/value at a time
and to always ensure that the impact is what I want before I move on to
another property. Somehow though, this particular problem is eluding me.

I've tried everything that I can think of without success. I've spent
several hours on it and the process itself is becoming very very tedious.
There has to be a better way and I'd like to know what it is. All I know is
that IE6 is taking account of the space needed for the information in my
problem div - if I add more content, it leaves a bigger space for the
information - but it fails to display any of the information at all. I've
tried drawing a border around the div and not even that appears. I think
something else on the page is somehow moving my problem div out of sight. I
just can't figure out how to make it appear.

I've kept my remarks deliberately vague. I doubt that anyone would want to
read a detailed account of all that I've done to solve this problem myself;
I've already spent enough time on this that I don't want to compound it with
another hour or more or writing a detailed play-by-play. Suffice it to say
that I am looking for a general technique for finding the problem, not a
specific fix for this one problem.

Can anyone get me started? If you can point me to a website that details
development/debugging procedures for CSS, that would be fine: I'm not asking
anyone to spend hours writing something original that just regurgitates an
existing site.

Your assistance would be greatly appreciated!

--
Rhino