Theme development

Using the default drupal.css fieldset style I seem to be having some problem in IE with a fixed width layout. In the new page/story/topic page where there are normally 3 fieldsets side by side, in IE on a fixed width layout the 3 fields clear each other. To see what I mean have a look at http://filterone.ath.cx/druprob.gif

I've noticed this on a few other fixed width drupal themes too, any easy solutions?

If I copy a theme to a new name in order to start modifying it, it doesn't load properly at all. I get a non-coloured page with no headers. I would have thought it should look identical to the original theme?

Cheers,
Jonathan.

I am working on a new theme for a live site. So I can't really make changes to the theme and test them without possibly breaking the live site. So I thought I would make a new theme and enable it only for my admin account. That way I would be the only one to see the broken content if I was testing stuff. But now that the theme is enabled, all my registered users can see it as an option in their user settings.

i just refered to this site with the article taming lists.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/

#pipe ul li.first {
	margin-left: 0;
	border-left: none;
	list-style: none;
	display: inline;
	}

#tabs ul li.here {
	border-bottom: 1px solid #ffc;
	list-style: none;
	display: inline;
	}

Drupal chameleon theme uses the pipe and tabs for menus. I traced through MENU_LOCAL_TASK in drupaldocs and i encountered these lines,

I'm fairly new and didnt see my question address when I did a couple of searches, I'm currently in the process of modifying chameleon to be used for my site, however I'm noticing high page load times, turning caching on and off, doesnt seem to help, and when on, interfers intermittely with the shout box module.

Are there any suggestions on increasing performance on a shared server, I just moved hosts and the performance is similar between the two, no noticable differences.

I think the rigid structure of the menu system is the only glaring inconsistency in an otherwise great piece of sotftware. I'm currently developing a University website based on drupal but need to customize the menu some and finding it very difficult to create a standards-compliant css drop-down menu.

At drupaldocs there is plenty of reference but no examples. and the existing examples on drupal.org; Overriding other theme functions, contaire.com article, and Protecting Content don't tell a designer exactly what to do.

I would like to place a horizontal custom menu in a specific place in page.tpl.php.