Scrollbars Disappearing in Firefox on a Mac

September 16, 2008 4:29pm

Today a potential client told me that when she visited my site, the vertical scrollbars weren’t showing up. “Poppycock” I thought, but alas, she was completely right and I was truly humbled while trying to sort out what the issue was. The Internet offered no help, so I was forced to go in and get my hands dirty in Coda.

I first thought that maybe it was a CSS problem, but even View > Page Style > No Style produced a site without scrollbars. Next I suspected Javascript, so I deleted all of the links my external Javascript files. Still, no scrollbars.

The culprit? Once again, Microsoft, or at least my lack of understanding Microsoft meta tags.

<meta http-equiv="msthemecompatible" content="no" />

I had discovered the code long ago, and it was supposed to aid in preventing Windows from forcing styles on IE6 buttons, but today for some reason it causes sites displayed in Firefox 3.0.1 on a Mac to not have scrollbars. Puzzling, but true.

Up Next: My Entire Adult Life Has Been Lived Under George W. Bush