Can anyone see the error in this code?

if the date displays fine in ff, there isnt anything wrong with the PHP

Its a CSS issue, in other words.

Technically, when declaring a CSS float, you need to specify a width for the floated DIV (height is less important).

.date{
float:left;
width:500px; // example
font-weight:bold;
}

Depending on how the divs are structured, adding a ‘display: inline;’ to a floated div can prevent certain bugs from occurring.

Also, when using floats I find that using divs instead of spans can often work better.

CSS bugs can be quite tricky – unless I see the entire page, I would not have much to go on. It is most likely not a problem with that block of code itself, but some conflict with it and the rest of the site.

If you would like to post a link to that page I can take a look.

The date shows up fine in IE7, just not IE6 (which is what most people mean by ‘not working in IE’ these days anyway *grin*). That whole section acts differently in every browser though.

The first thing I see is that you are trying to float divs inside a P tag, which is never that great of an idea:

<p class="meta">
etc..

I would first turn meta into a div. Then instead of using a single div to float the date left, use one for the left data, and one for the right, clearing after them. Something like this:

<div class="meta">

<div style="width:49%; float: left;">
  (post date code)
</div>

<div style="width: 49%; float: right;">
  (posted by, leave a comment, etc..)
</div>

<div style="clear:both;"><!-- --></div>

(categories and trackback links here)

</div> <!-- end of meta -->

As for the size of the first letter of the post, you are doing this:

<font color="#996600"><em><font face="Comic"><font size="6">A</font></font></em></font>

CSS would handle this much better. Example:

<span style="color: #996600; font-style: italic; font-size: 180%;">A</span>ccording

Of course you could move that to a custom class within your CSS file, and just apply it like this:

<span class="first-letter">A</span>ccording

That should help take care of the line height issues as well. If not, you could experiment with the line-height property of that class.

I don’t understand why you are floating it in the first place. I’d change the meta paragraph to a div using that class and then use a list or paragraphs within for each line. OR, use line breaks. BTW, you are also using <br> in an xhtml document. It should be

<div class="meta">
<p>whatever you want here</p>
<p>whatever you want here</p>
<p>whatever you want here</p>
<p>whatever you want here</p>
</div>

or keep it a paragraph, use linebreaks to get separate lines. OR, us an unordered list and list items (most semantically correct, imo)

floating should be avoided unless it is the only thing that will do the trick. It’s buggy, especially in IE browsers. Sometimes declaring position:relative helps (or can add other types of bugs, but hey, that the drawback of floating). I’d never use the display:inline like suggested by someone above. If anything, if you simply feel you MUST float a span, you should declare display:block and use a width.

But none of that is even necessary. BTW, you can look at the generated source and see that the php is working. It is your css and markup that is the issue.

HTH