Ie6 Relative Positioning Bug how to avoid

i have the following definition in my style and i'd like all elements in site to be relatively positioned against their parents so i can position any of them absolute when i need to:

{	 margin:0; padding:0; 		  font-family:verdana,arial,sans-serif;	 font-size:11px;	 text-align:left;	 background:none;	 color:black;	 position:relative;	}

All good in opera9 and FF2beta but IE6 stills the page without the possibility of scrolling it down.
Any ideas?

Position:relative is the default positioning and should not have to be declared there.
Also, Absolute positioning is a problem child in many situations. Best to avoid it unless absolutely required (pun intended) for the purpose.
Having said that, I would be tempted to remove the position:relative from the Universal selector and declare it on the direct ancestor to affect the elements you want positioned absolutley. And any descendants should be reset to position:relative.
Might work.

*edit*
I knew I had a link...

http://www.positioniseverything.net/abs_relbugs.html

And also, check the CSS Creator site for their discussion about 'haslayout'. Simply stated, trigger the 'haslayout' condition using their hack. Typically, add a height to the Parent contiainer, but read about it first, there might be something else that would work better for you. Since you haven't posted a particular example, it is difficult to say for sure which trigger you should use to set 'haslayout'.

See also: http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/onhavinglayout.html

Edited October 10, 2006 by jlhaslip (see edit history)