Phoenix is a new Mozilla-based browser that appeals to me for two reasons: it’s trimmed down (just a browser, without all the mail/news/address effluvia that Netscape and Mozilla want to install), and it adopts little shortcuts from IE where they make sense, so my fingers know how to work it. The tabbed interface is intriguing, though it isn’t second nature to me yet.

Using Phoenix finally got me to work on this site’s CSS so that it renders the same in both browsers. I understand the theory of CSS, but fiddling with it always feels like bits of stuff slipping between my fingers: when I change a padding someplace, I have to go change another padding someplace else. The main things I figured out today are:

• Put explicit margin and padding specs all over the place.
• Specify line-height in ems rather than percentage, since IE bases the percentage on the current font-size, but Mozilla bases it on the inherited line-height, while both base the em unit on current font-size.