My first site: How horrible is my code (mainly in relation to floats and positioning)?

Question

I'm a self-taught web designer and one of the biggest things I have found difficult to grasp is the concept of floats and positioning and I'm afraid it's coming back to bite me in the ass as I'm trying to integrate drop-down menus into my existing navigation.

Further reason to believe my code is horrible is two-fold:

1. The navigation does not render consistently for cross-browser and cross-platform support. They are minor inconsistencies, at least visually, that I suspect is representative of major flaws in my code.

2. My page layout breaks in IE 7, most likely due to floats, positioning, as well as a lack of adherence to the box model and IE's width discrepancies.

I've tried to integrate a modified version of the Twenty Ten wordpress theme drop-down menu, but couldn't as it broke the layout.

I hope this doesn't come off as begging for someone to do the work for me. I genuinely want to understand this, but I unfortunately do not have the knowledge necessary to troubleshoot.

Any guidance or help will be greatly appreciated.

Here's the site.

Answer 1

Actually, that's not too bad. I've seen stuff that was much worse.

As for learning positioning and proper CSS design, I highly recommend The Zen of CSS Design. It is a valuable resource in learning how to do CSS correctly.

As for browser compatabilities, here's my scoop on the matter:

First off, if you want to be a professional web designer, it must work on every browser. Period. If it doesn't work on every major browser, then it isn't worth paying for.

In order to get it to work on every browser, I recommend the following:

1. Start by designing all of your pages on a standards-compliant browser (FF, Chrome, Safari, etc.). Do not design on Internet Explorer.
2. Work incrementally. Make a small number of changes, test it on all browsers, and catch problems early.
3. When you spot a problem, search online for why things look different. If you can't find out why things look different, feel free to ask why on SO or other sites like this.

It is a long journey, but you are further down the path than you think.