Hooray! Sidebar Problems No More!

Extra! Extra! Sidebar Problem Fixed!

I had this very frustrating Sidebar issue over the last few days that I just couldn't get rid of. Sounds like a disease, right? Anyway, my blog has been cured and I am deleriously happy!

There is a simple answer and a more technical answer to why my sidebar shifted. You may encounter this predicament in your early days of blogging too, so I will provide the good, the bad and the ugly, and then tell you what I did.

Blogger.com gives their solution to the problem here:

Blogger's Sidebar Resolution

And I quote:

Why does my sidebar shift to the bottom of the page?

On occasion, one column (often the sidebar) will shift when the content contained within a side-menu or a post extends a column beyond its designated width. This behavior varies across browsers so the issue will not always occur when a visitor views your page. To resolve the problem we recommend reviewing the content in both columns to identify items that may be causing column expansion. In most cases, long links and wide images are the cause of the problem.

Although a little outdated, I found a Technical Answer to the problem of browser view differentiation written by Matthias Gutfeldt here:

Doctype Switching and Standards Compliance: An Overview

And I quote:

Summary: Some modern browsers have two rendering modes. Quirk mode renders an HTML document like older browsers used to do it, e.g. Netscape 4, Internet Explorer 4 and 5. Standard mode renders a page according to W3C recommendations. Depending on the document type declaration present in the HTML document, the browser will switch into either quirk mode or standard mode. If there is no document type declaration present, the browser will switch into quirk mode.

The situation

First, the good news: The latest versions of browsers like Opera, Netscape Communicator, and Internet Explorer have better support for W3C recommendations than their predecessors.

Now the bad news: Most web pages were written for compatibility with popular browsers like Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 4 and 5. This included using proprietary HTML elements and attributes, or relying on certain bugs. Examples for proprietary elements: layer, marquee, blink. Examples for proprietary attributes, or incorrect use of attributes: bordercolor, marginwidth, marginheight, topmargin, leftmargin. Example for reliance on a known bug: The CSS box model in Internet Explorer 5 / PC, which does not follow the CSS standards.

Another great site for Common Positioning Problems with browsers can be found here:

Position is Everything

So, I hope that was interesting reading. If you have come this far, you can see that I no longer have the Sidebar problem. In my next article, I will let you in on what I did in hopes that my experience will help you if you ever find yourself in the same predicament.

Finally, as this blog is suppose to focus on what I am doing to make money by blogging, I will direct you to:

1. My Free Surveys and More blog. I hope you check it out!
2. For a fast and easy way to generate lots of traffic to your blog, sign up for this: Instant Buzz
3. And don’t forget to read that Blogging to the Bank E-Book Review.

I will be happy to read your comments on this topic. Of course, if you have any questions, you only need to ask them and I’ll try to get an answer for you as soon as possible.

Until next time……

Blogging, Sidebar, Blogging to the Bank

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)