DIV tags behaving strangely - css

Question

My private webpage's main content is not displaying strangely within Firefox. The header and footer bar both display and the main text is placed adjacent to them towards the right. Occasionally, the footer also moves above the main text. I'm guessing this is all one issue involving the positioning of DIVs that I'm somehow missing. [This has been solved]
The height of two DIVs that are equally as tall when displayed in Chrome is also different. This issue also occurs in Safari but in a different way. There is a 1 px gap between the logo and the navbar that isn't present when viewed in Chrome or Firefox. Can anyone think of a way to reset all of the browser defaults to prevent similar things from happening in the future?
The website is currently not online yet and I'm debugging it for final release. (I don't really want to release this in the current condition as it will frustrate anyone who doesn't use a webkit browser.)
Also, as a side note, anyone know how to fix the CSS errors I'm getting in Internet Explorer 9? The gradient in the nav bar is gone, some areas have missing background color, and all picture links have annoying boxes around them.
EDIT: I saw in an online CSS gradient generator what I need to do to make the gradients work in IE9. The background issue apparently stems from the same source.
Also, is anyone in Opera experiencing issues with the latest debug version at http://jsbin.com/ipixay/1? (Credit for this one goes to Sunyatasattva.)
The link to the fiddle (where the code is posted at) is: http://jsfiddle.net/aaQSD/7/ Please forgive me for the amount of CSS that's still there, but I can't tell which causes the Internet Explorer 9 problems.
My best guess is that the Firefox problem lies somewhere in this section of CSS:
body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
text-align: center;
font-family: Times;
background: #efefef url(pics/background.png) repeat top center;
}
#container {
overflow:auto;
width: 95%;
min-height: 100%;
min-width: 946px;
margin: 0 auto 10px auto;
}
#content-wrapper {
width: 100%;
float: right;
text-align: left;
margin: 10px 0 0 0;
}
#content-inner {
padding: 0 15px 0 15px;
}
.center-slide {
font: normal 62.5%/1.5 Times;
letter-spacing: 0;
width: 900px;
height: 485px;
position: relative;
padding: 20px 0 0 0;
margin: 0 auto 0 auto;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
border-radius: 8px;
}
.boxes {
margin: 0 auto 0 auto;
width: 900px;
}
.left-box {
float: left;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
border-radius: 8px;
margin: 10px 5px 0 0;
padding: 20px;
width: 500px;
position: relative;
}
.logo {
width: 26%;
text-align: center;
float: left;
font-family: Times;
font-size: 65px;
font-weight: bold;
color: #FFFFFF;
padding: 10px 0 0 0;
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(0% 22px 90deg, #0B3474, #517ABA);
background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 70%, from(#517ABA), to(#0B3474));
}
header {
width: 100%;
min-width: 863px;
background-color: #000047;
float: left;
padding: 10px;
color: #FFFFFF;
text-align: left;
font-size: 20px;
overflow: hidden;
margin: 0 0 10px 0;
}
nav {
background-color: #6a6a6a;
font: 16px Times;
min-width: 700px;
float: right;
width: 74%;
}
footer {
font-family: Times;
text-align: center;
background-color: #000047;
color: #FFFFFF;
text-align: center;
padding: 10px 0;
width: 100%;
min-width: 863px;
}
Here is the list of things that have been fixed:
Unwanted boxes/borders around picture
Firefox display issue
Glitchy footer
EDIT: I'm currently working on making a fiddle with the minimal code to replicate the issue as suggested in the comments. I hope you can forgive me for my noobish mistake. Thanks, everyone who have responded so far!
EDIT 2: The fiddle is out! I've removed the pandora's box of code that used to be below.

Answer 1

The header and footer are displayed adjacent to the main container
Is there a reason why they are floated? Removing the float: left rule from the header, makes the container stack below it. If they need to be floated for some reason I am not seeing, perhaps you should consider adding a clear?
Logo height different from navbar element heights
This piece baffled me a bit: I think the culprit is browser default line-height property, which, on Chrome, is coincidentally making your elements align.
Your nav elements have a set line-height of 61, plus a vertical padding of 12 on both sides, adding up to 85px. Your logo has no defined line-height and a font-size of 65px plus a padding-top of 10px. In Firefox this is 10px short.
To fix this, just set the line-height to your logo element as well.
Here is a working JSBin of your code:
Working example
Internet explorer problems:
Missing gradient
Missing background
Annoying border
I don't have IE9 at hand right now, so I might look into it later if you need it, but here are my guesses.
As for the missing gradient, your CSS specifies only webkit and mozilla vendor prefixes. You might want to take a look at the -ms– prefix as well, and check which rules really need it and which don't.
I am skipping the missing background part because it's quite vague and I am not testing on IE right now.
As for the border around linked images, you could perhaps add this rule to your CSS:
a img {
border: 0;
outline: 0;
}
EDIT:
Safari annoying one pixel gap
As for the Safari annoying one pixel gap, it apparently comes from the fact that Safari doesn't calculate well your float: left + width: 26% plus float: right + width: 74%. Adding a .1% to the first element width fixes the problem, but it is not the most elegant solution.
The best solution for your problem at hand is to just float both your elements left. You can see an updated fiddle working in Safari:
Working example

Answer 2

I have edited your fiddle for it to work. I essentially just added float: left; to your #container. You can look at my edits for further details. http://jsfiddle.net/aaQSD/8/