I have a layout with a menu DIV on the left. This is floated left with a fixed EM width. I then have a content DIV which has a left margin of more than the menu's width. So it sits nicely to the right of the menu and fills up the remaining space with both menu and content lined up perfectly.
However, in Internet Explorer 6, if the content gets too wide it falls down below the menu. which means you have loads of whitespace and can't actually see any of the content at all without scrolling.
Unfortunately I am not able to make changes to the content - this is a redesign of a site hosting 3rd party content, and changing that content is outside the scope of what I can do.
Also, there is a footer bar that must be underneath both the menu and the content.
I managed to almost get it to work by providing IE6 with a different layout using absolute positioning - unfortunately the footer looks rubbish and as IE6 is the 2nd most used browser on our site I can't really go with that.
I also tried messing around with overflows but ended up causing problems with random scrollbars appearing all over the place which wasn't any good either.
Does anyone know if there is a simple non-Javascript way of doing this that will work in IE6 as well as "proper" browsers? I'm currently thinking that it will have to be a table based layout.
Here's an example of the problem:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<style type="text/css">
.menu {
width: 14em;
float: left;
}
.content {
margin-left: 15em;
zoom: 1;
}
.footer {
clear: both;
}
/* styling to make the demo more obvious */
.menu {
background-color: #f99;
}
.content {
background-color: #9f9;
}
.footer {
background-color: #99f;
}
td {
border: 1px solid #000;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="container">
<div class="menu">
<ul>
<li><a href="#">menu item</a></li>
<li><a href="#">menu item</a></li>
<li><a href="#">menu item</a></li>
<li><a href="#">menu item</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="content">
<h1>Main Content</h1>
<table>
<tr>
<td>this is a really</td>
<td>wide table which</td>
<td>I am using to push</td>
<td>the content down</td>
<td>need to keep going</td>
<td>so that it breaks</td>
<td>in ie6</td>
<td>but naturally</td>
<td>nothing else</td>
<td>sghskdhksdhfsdhffs</td>
<td>sghskdhksdhfsdhffs</td>
<td>sghskdhksdhfsdhffs</td>
<td>sghskdhksdhfsdhffs</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</div>
<div class="footer">
<p>
Copyright blah blah blah
</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>