As approximately 30% of my readers undoubtedly noticed, Internet Explorer had serious issues displaying the redesigned bit qua bit properly. Unfortunately, since IE lacks developer tools like the excellent Firebug and Web Developer toolbar, trying to figure out exactly what IE was choking on threatened to become a game of guess-and-test—the main reason that I’ve been so slow to get it fixed.

Today, by happenstance, I came across a bookmarklet called Xray. You simply throw Xray into your toolbar, click it on any web page, and an easy-to-use CSS inspector pops up. Click on any element of the page and its CSS properties will be displayed; navigating through the DOM involves simply using your cursor keys. I fired up Xray in IE, and in under a minute, found the causes of the layout glitches and added two lines of CSS to fix them. The result: bit qua bit now renders properly in all major browsers. If you have to debug CSS problems in IE, I’d definitely encourage you to give Xray a shot.