Ok - 2 things.
Firstly - yes removing the whitespace works but on a menu that size I wouldn't use it - it'll be a nightmare to edit. I used it primarily to show that it was the whitespace bug causing the issue. There are better ways of fixing it.
In the test page I've posted I've changed the menu back to the properly indented form to make life easier to edit it and I've added two little rules for your CSS:
#navigation li li a { display: inline-block; }
#navigation li li a { display: block; }
Put these after all your other #navigation rules in the stylesheet. This fixes it for IE7. Oddly - in IE6 and under the whitespace bug wasn't showing... go figure.
Just copy and paste the navigation list back into your page from my test page.
Secondly, to make the dropdowns drop down in IE6 and under, copy the following code into a blank page of Notepad or whatever and save it as csshover.htc - upload it to your webserver.
<attach event="ondocumentready" handler="parseStylesheets" />
<script>
/**
* Whatever:hover - V1.42.060206 - hover & active
* ------------------------------------------------------------
* (c) 2005 - Peter Nederlof
* Peterned - http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/
* License - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/LGPL/2.1/
*
* Whatever:hover is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
* License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
* version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
*
* Whatever:hover is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
* Lesser General Public License for more details.
*
* Credits and thanks to:
* Arnoud Berendsen, Martin Reurings, Robert Hanson
*
* howto: body { behavior:url("csshover.htc"); }
* ------------------------------------------------------------
*/
var csshoverReg = /(^|\s)(([^a]([^ ]+)?)|(a([^#.][^ ]+)+)):(hover|active)/i,
currentSheet, doc = window.document, hoverEvents = [], activators = {
onhover:{on:'onmouseover', off:'onmouseout'},
onactive:{on:'onmousedown', off:'onmouseup'}
}
function parseStylesheets() {
if(!/MSIE (5|6)/.test(navigator.userAgent)) return;
window.attachEvent('onunload', unhookHoverEvents);
var sheets = doc.styleSheets, l = sheets.length;
for(var i=0; i<l; i++)
parseStylesheet(sheets);
}
function parseStylesheet(sheet) {
if(sheet.imports) {
try {
var imports = sheet.imports, l = imports.length;
for(var i=0; i<l; i++) parseStylesheet(sheet.imports);
} catch(securityException){}
}
try {
var rules = (currentSheet = sheet).rules, l = rules.length;
for(var j=0; j<l; j++) parseCSSRule(rules[j]);
} catch(securityException){}
}
function parseCSSRule(rule) {
var select = rule.selectorText, style = rule.style.cssText;
if(!csshoverReg.test(select) || !style) return;
var pseudo = select.replace(/[^:]+:([a-z-]+).*/i, 'on$1');
var newSelect = select.replace(/(\.([a-z0-9_-]+):[a-z]+)|(:[a-z]+)/gi, '.$2' + pseudo);
var className = (/\.([a-z0-9_-]*on(hover|active))/i).exec(newSelect)[1];
var affected = select.replace(/:(hover|active).*$/, '');
var elements = getElementsBySelect(affected);
if(elements.length == 0) return;
currentSheet.addRule(newSelect, style);
for(var i=0; i<elements.length; i++)
new HoverElement(elements, className, activators[pseudo]);
}
function HoverElement(node, className, events) {
if(!node.hovers) node.hovers = {};
if(node.hovers[className]) return;
node.hovers[className] = true;
hookHoverEvent(node, events.on, function() { node.className += ' ' + className; });
hookHoverEvent(node, events.off, function() { node.className = node.className.replace(new RegExp('\\s+'+className, 'g'),''); });
}
function hookHoverEvent(node, type, handler) {
node.attachEvent(type, handler);
hoverEvents[hoverEvents.length] = {
node:node, type:type, handler:handler
};
}
function unhookHoverEvents() {
for(var e,i=0; i<hoverEvents.length; i++) {
e = hoverEvents;
e.node.detachEvent(e.type, e.handler);
}
}
function getElementsBySelect(rule) {
var parts, nodes = [doc];
parts = rule.split(' ');
for(var i=0; i<parts.length; i++) {
nodes = getSelectedNodes(parts, nodes);
} return nodes;
}
function getSelectedNodes(select, elements) {
var result, node, nodes = [];
var identify = (/\#([a-z0-9_-]+)/i).exec(select);
if(identify) {
var element = doc.getElementById(identify[1]);
return element? [element]:nodes;
}
var classname = (/\.([a-z0-9_-]+)/i).exec(select);
var tagName = select.replace(/(\.|\#|\:)[a-z0-9_-]+/i, '');
var classReg = classname? new RegExp('\\b' + classname[1] + '\\b'):false;
for(var i=0; i<elements.length; i++) {
result = tagName? elements.all.tags(tagName):elements.all;
for(var j=0; j<result.length; j++) {
node = result[j];
if(classReg && !classReg.test(node.className)) continue;
nodes[nodes.length] = node;
}
}
return nodes;
}
</script>
This code comes from here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/csshover.html
Now at the bottom of your stylesheet add this:
body { behavior:url("csshover.htc"); }
Making sure the path to the file from the stylesheet is correct - i.e. in this case it's in the same directory (in the example I've got all the rules in the document head).
And that's it.
The example will look a little odd because I've stuck all your CSS rules into the document head so all the paths to the images etc will be off - so ignore that.
