Browsera Blog Cross-Browser Site Compatibility

Missing Close Tags Cause Undefined Layout Behavior - Techcrunch Advertising

It seems that even our friends over at TechCrunch have some serious layout problems, even in IE7.  In this situation, the ad sidebar is wrapped way down below where they should be in IE7 (but are in the correct location in IE6).  Techcrunch gets 5.5 million visitors a month, and while a lot of their traffic is Firefox and Safari, at least some of those visitors are using IE7.  I’d even go farther and hypothesize that among customers who run ads on TechCrunch, IE is a higher percentage.

So, if you were an advertiser considering placing an ad at TechCrunch using IE7 and saw the buggy miserable ad placement on the page, you might think twice about the value of buying that ad.  And, all those visitors using IE7 will probably not even see the ads unless they happen to scroll down past the trackbacks.

The fix in this case is simple.  The <div> tags arent close properly in <div id=’col1′> and this leads to undefined behavior across browsers, especially when dealing with floats.  Close the divs properly and the problem goes away.  There are a few other bugs on TechCrunch you can check out, of similar magnitude.

This is the kind of bug that can directly impact revenue, so it’s a good idea to protect yourself by testing your site in Browsera.