So my great nemesis, besides the apparent different in length and size between browsers, is making everything look..right in Internet Explorer.

I've heard about hacks, I've learned you can use images to make it look neat and work properly, but I like to first see if there are other ways to do it as well.

What techniques do you use to make your site look good in IE?

If you really put in the time and effort, and use all the appropriate techniques, and maybe compromise just a little then there is no need for hacks. You can have a "one stylesheet fits all" kind of website. Or alternatively you can use the hacks and load a separate stylesheet for IE

I know, and it's not that I can't, I just wanted something easier, something that I probably missed. I don't know if my poor fingers can keep this up much longer.

Well other than hacks I can't really think of anything. This article lists some of the different types of hacks and their pros and cons

Originally Posted by Dredgeretk

What techniques do you use to make your site look good in IE?

Absolutely none at all, I don't see enough IE7 user to even care.

You should NEVER use hacks, you're just asking for trouble.
There are a number of methods for dealing with the demon IE, one of which is conditional comments and separate stylesheets or other similar methods.

IE7 people are using a FIVE YEAR OLD browser that is a mess, they need to accept that and also accept that they are just not going to see the web the way they would see it in BETTER (and newer) browsers. Should all websites look the same in all browsers? The answer is NO because they are not all exactly the same!

Actually old versions of IE is not supported in modern CSS.
You should use CSS2 and make code compatible with all browsers.
Thanks.

You should use CSS2 and make code compatible with all browsers.

Not really. There is no reason whatsoever not to use CSS3 for better browsers and just let the old IE users get what they get - square corners, no shadows, no gradients, whatever. We need to stop holding our sites back because of old crappy browsers and move FORWARD. Let the old, crappy browsers degrade gracefully so your content is still presented, but stop killing yourself trying to make it EXACTLY like better browsers.

To set it straight, not all features of CSS2 are fully supported by IE7 either!

Actually old versions of IE is not supported in modern CSS.

ACTUALLY that is the wrong way around.

It is modern CSS that is NOT supported by older versions of IE. (sometime the newer versions)

browser developers play catch up with the CSS specs not the other way round.

So hacks are out of the questions, and those conditional statements look pretty good. From what I can see it'd be better to make a message solely for IE tell them to switch browsers and make all of the rest of the content scrollable by about 150000000px.

Things haven't changed that much. Design for the compliant browsers like Firefox, use conditional comments (which are not a hack) to kick IE into compliance.

The main difference now is that you're kicking IE 7+ into compliance rather than 6. Even then, pay close attention to the percentage of users using 7; as Chris says, in his case it's not sufficient to warrant the fixes.

And don't worry about a message for the IE users. That really goes back to the bad old days of the browser wars with pages that read, "Best viewed in Netscape v.xxx"

Even so, design for the good browsers, at least let things degrade gracefully for the others.

tim