Help with vertical Spry menu

Question

I posted this in the general forum, but thought I'd repost
here since this is more specific to Spry.
I'm having issues in IE (6 & 7...surprise, surprise) with
my vertical spry menu. It displays exactly the way I want it when I
use Opera. I think it has to do with the whitespace:nowrap on the
2nd level menu items, but I really don't know. I want the 2nd level
menu to be different width than the 3rd level, so I have both
levels set to auto width with nowrap.
This is how it looks in IE 7:
Menu
in IE
This is how it looks in Opera (correct):
Menu
in Opera
Attached is my CSS as well. Let me know if you need the HTML,
too.
Thank you for helping!
quote:
@charset "UTF-8";
/* SpryMenuBarVertical.css - Revision: Spry Preview Release
1.4 */
/* Copyright (c) 2006. Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights
reserved. */
LAYOUT INFORMATION: describes box model, positioning,
z-order
/* The outermost container of the Menu Bar, a fixed width box
with no margin or padding */
ul.MenuBarVertical
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
list-style-type: none;
font-size: 100%;
cursor: default;
width: 8em;
/* Set the active Menu Bar with this class, currently setting
z-index to accomodate IE rendering bug:
http://therealcrisp.xs4all.nl/meuk/IE-zindexbug.html
ul.MenuBarActive
z-index: 1000;
/* Menu item containers, position children relative to this
container and are same fixed width as parent */
ul.MenuBarVertical li
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
list-style-type: none;
font-size: 100%;
position: relative;
text-align: left;
cursor: pointer;
width: 8em;
/* Submenus should appear slightly overlapping to the right
(95%) and up (-5%) with a higher z-index, but they are initially
off the left side of the screen (-1000em) */
ul.MenuBarVertical ul
margin: -5% 0 0 95%;
padding: 0;
list-style-type: none;
font-size: 100%;
position: absolute;
z-index: 1020;
cursor: default;
width: auto;
left: -1000em;
top: 0;
white-space: nowrap;
/* Submenu that is showing with class designation
MenuBarSubmenuVisible, we set left to 0 so it comes onto the screen
ul.MenuBarVertical ul.MenuBarSubmenuVisible
left: 0;
/* Menu item containers are same fixed width as parent */
ul.MenuBarVertical ul li
width: auto;
white-space: nowrap;
DESIGN INFORMATION: describes color scheme, borders, fonts
/* Outermost menu container has borders on all sides */
ul.MenuBarVertical
border: 1px solid #CCC;
/* Submenu containers have borders on all sides */
ul.MenuBarVertical ul
border: 1px solid #CCC;
/* Menu items are a light gray block with padding and no text
decoration */
ul.MenuBarVertical a
display: block;
cursor: pointer;
background-color: #EEE;
padding: 0.5em 0.75em;
color: #333;
text-decoration: none;
/* Menu items that have mouse over or focus have a blue
background and white text */
ul.MenuBarVertical a:hover, ul.MenuBarVertical a:focus
background-color: #33C;
color: #FFF;
/* Menu items that are open with submenus are set to
MenuBarItemHover with a blue background and white text */
ul.MenuBarVertical a.MenuBarItemHover, ul.MenuBarVertical
a.MenuBarItemSubmenuHover, ul.MenuBarVertical
a.MenuBarSubmenuVisible
background-color: #33C;
color: #FFF;
SUBMENU INDICATION: styles if there is a submenu under a
given menu item
/* Menu items that have a submenu have the class designation
MenuBarItemSubmenu and are set to use a background image positioned
on the far left (95%) and centered vertically (50%) */
ul.MenuBarVertical a.MenuBarItemSubmenu
background-image: url(SpryMenuBarRight.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: 95% 50%;
/* Menu items that are open with submenus have the class
designation MenuBarItemSubmenuHover and are set to use a "hover"
background image positioned on the far left (95%) and centered
vertically (50%) */
ul.MenuBarVertical a.MenuBarItemSubmenuHover
background-image: url(SpryMenuBarRightHover.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: 95% 50%;
BROWSER HACKS: the hacks below should not be changed unless
you are an expert
/* HACK FOR IE: to make sure the sub menus show above form
controls, we underlay each submenu with an iframe */
ul.MenuBarVertical iframe
position: absolute;
z-index: 1010;
/* HACK FOR IE: to stabilize appearance of menu items; the
slash in float is to keep IE 5.0 from parsing */
@media screen, projection
ul.MenuBarVertical li.MenuBarItemIE
display: inline;
f\loat: left;
background: #FFF;

Answer 1

IE is a big problem child among browsers.  Don't use it as your default browser.
For best results, build your site to display & perform well in the web standards browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari & Opera.   If it works in one, it should work pretty much the same in all of them.
After you're satisfied with how your site looks in the good browsers, then test in IE.  If needed, add hacks or conditional comments to make IE behave.  There are many web sites that discuss known bugs in IE and how to work around them.
Lastly, the active X nag screens only appear locally.  Once deployed on the remote server, you won't see them.
For better answers to your layout questions, we need to see your page.  Can you post a URL?
Nancy O.
Alt-Web Design & Publishing
Web | Graphics | Print | Media  Specialists 
http://alt-web.com/
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