The Power of Community

Every once in a while I run into a problem that’s just stupid. There’s no other way to describe it. Anyone who codes for the web knows this feeling. There’s always one browser that refuses to comply, and now you have the privilege of finding out which bug is causing Internet Explorer to render differently than everyone else.

I just had one of these wonderful errors, and Twitter came to my rescue.

What Happened

I’d spent nearly two hours attempting to fix a single bug in IE7, and it was wearing on my nerves. After taking a bit of a break for lunch, I came back to the problem and it was just as bad. Regardless of what I tried, it wouldn’t fix.

Then, I thought I found a solution. I should just float the element instead of positioning it absolutely. This, however, came with it’s own set of problems. Those problems didn’t need to just be fixed in IE7. They were across the board. Ghhaaa!!

So, back to the original method and then to the frustration of the still unsolved IE problem.

Crap, I Need Help!

It occurred to me that I have a large amount of followers who are involved with the tech and design community. So, I whipped up a web page that included the following information:

• A paragraph explaining my issue.
• The CSS associated with the offending element and its immediate surroundings.
• The HTML associated with the offending element and its immediate surroundings.
• Screen shots of the element in FF and IE7.

With that taking no more than five minutes, I let out the call on Twitter.

Dude, This Is Awesome

Within an hour, six people had messaged me with various hypotheses. They were all super helpful. What’s more is that they had real information. It wasn’t just “lol, ur dum” sort of comments.

So, thank you @tedgrafx, @thebeerrun, @barneycarroll, @fairheadc, and especially @shimoroka. You all helped me solve the problem that I spent longer than I should have on in record time.

It also turns out that I was being dumb… hadn’t dealt with a hasLayout bug in so long that I had forgotten both what causes and what fixes them. Two points for a complicated design.