What actually makes internet explorer (in particular ie6) behave so differently

I am really getting tired of cross browser issues when developing - in particular finding hacks and workarounds for inconsistent rendering between browsers, obviously particularly IE and more specifically IE6.

I cant fin开发者_如何学God any resources though that discuss the actual fundamentals of why they render differently and that acutally explain hacks/workaround instead of of just showing them.

Does anyone know of any such resources.

IE6 was coming from a time that could be seen as 'pre-standard' competition, where formats and features differ.

Example: E.g. when the Video recorder was developed, There was VHS but Philips bet on the Video2000 system. And that did not play content on VHS tapes. After the standard was chosen, VHS won... The same happens now with BluRay and HD-DVD. And in a way, this also happens with browsers, but at least hey play each others content but with different interpretations. You decided what is better: not playing a VHS tape in your video2000 system or with slighty buggisch colors. The last is what happening in the browsers.

At the time of IE6, the standards were not complete and everybody was rushing to get their browser out, regardless of standard-compatibility. Now, the world - like you - more or less recognizes the need for one standard. That will be HTML5.