twiddle thumbs has brought back home with her a pc laptop from work several times but today was the first time i tried using it. i wanted to see if it had the same web display issues that some people have mentioned to me they have with viewing my site. i would have never thought of checking it out on that laptop if i hadn't just discovered that twiddle thumbs has the same issue on her desktop at work. it's too much of a hassle for her to be my guinea pig while we're both at work and constantly ask her to refresh the page as i experimentingly edit the code to correct the problem. thus, i tried the pc laptop at home as i edited the files on my mac laptop. lo and behold after much consternation, i was able to correct the problem. it was one little line of css that i did not expect to be the issue, hence it was not resolved until now.

the problem was this...using css, i had specified the main body to float in one direction while the sidebar floated to the other side. that's the standard way of having a sidebar. what i didn't realize that you have to do one more thing or some versions of internet explorer (and possibly some other decrepit systems) freak out. the container holding the main and sidebar must also float over. i specificed to float to the left and then it became visible. i suppose without me specifying to do so, the browser was floating everything over to the right beyond what the browser could display or perhaps it just said fuck this and didn't show it at all. ahahahhahaa anyway, i think the matter has been resolved now and i've learned my css lesson. i even checked another site i made before and it had the same 1 line of css missing but the end result was a different display problem. you could see everything, it just didn't align the way i wanted. after adding in that extra float line, everything looks peachy.