XHTML/CSS Problem

Okay, if you check out the XHTML Test theme you'll see some weirdness going on with the left bar on ASE Labs.

I'm looking for a way to not use a float for the left navigation bar or use a float for the center content. It is screwing up the layout for some clears and on IE totally. I believe that layers could be used for this task. Someone help!

IE = crap. check out my website jollybox.de in IE and then in a web browser. I rely heavily on XHTML+CSS and have learned my lesson.
I wasn't trying to be helpful.

Yes, well... I cannot leave IE out. I am cutting the minimum browser level to Firefox, IE6, Opera 8, etc... All other browsers will get feed a new theme called 'HTML4' which will be this current style.

That's too extreme in my eyes. Please only lock out known-bad browsers. (such as netscape < 6)

It isn't as extreme as you think. The older browsers will be able to use this theme currently, and by not supported I mean it won't look exactly the same.

The new XHTML test looks fine in IE5.5, but I'm not going out of my way to do hacks.

I've figured out how to use layers instead of floats for the left bar and page. It will work out nicely I hope. There is still a rendering problem with the text of all things on IE6 WinXP SP2. The text doesn't show in many places. Weird.

by all means, filter old browsers; but do not filter unknown browsers if you can help it. You cannot keep tags on all current browsers' User_Agent strings.

I gave up trying to get the dual column layout to work in IE and Firefox. In Firefox, everything works correctly and when I try to make it work with IE, it just doesn't. I'm going back to a table for the two column thing... ohh well. The site should validate with XHTML anyway.