It’s amazing what you learn when people more picky than yourself complain about things you would normally let slide by. I’ll reluctantly admit that this occurs when anal-retentive individuals weigh in on layouts. (The anal make good designers– insert joke here) And thoroughness certainly prevents problems at the printer. But I’m learning the most these days about web design. And get this: it’s from clients who don’t know squat about the internet! They just know when they see something they don’t like. A few examples:

Drop-downs & Flash: Everyone knows that flash and DHTML don’t mix. Drop-down menus and the like disappear behind flash objects, and who knew there was a fix? It’s as simple as adding a wmode parameter to your html (wmode=”opaque”). This causes the flash to render within the layout, rather than on top and apart from it. This slightly affects performance (nothing I’ve noticed), though not prohibitively as is the case with transparent windowless mode.

The Eolas Problem: Solves the IE7 “boxes around objects” and “click to activate” issues. Detailed here.

Image Toolbar: IE6 garbage, though I was amazed there was actually a fix for it. When you hover over a decent photo in IE6, you get a toolbar with icons to save, print, etc. Purportedly to save us the trouble of right-clicking. Throw in the head section, and goodbye toolbar!

Those first two are pure gold, by the way.