My FIRST .css - but NOT WORKING in Microsoft IE!!???

scudder · Joined: 27 Jul 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Florida

Hello!! I'm a NEWWWWW HTMLer!! I am basically totally SELF-TAUGHT having created my first webpage back in 1997 by trial and error, "borrowing" code from various sites and reading about the basic tags and formatting on the internet. The SECOND site I ever made was about 2 years ago and that was very very basic as well....fonts, links, tables, images, colors, background colors, font sizes...

I recently took on the task of creating another website for a friend and researched the internet to brush up on my rusty HTMLing. I was running into some font and table problems when I found this <htmlcodetutorial> website here!! I paid SPECIFIC attention to the "Break the <FONT...> Habit" section, read ALL the pages, "readied" my HTML for use with an EXTERNAL style sheet and created my VERY FIRST .css!!!

I uploaded the CSS to my host server and everything SEEMED fine at home...after a little tweaking for formating that I did not intend or did not correctly define. HOWEVER, when I checked the pages I uploaded at work, the formating result was NOT CORRECT and NOT THE SAME as when I checked at home!!!

AT HOME I was creating the HTML pages and the CSS on my PowerBook and VIEWING the uploaded pages with the latest version of Apple's Safari. AT WORK I tried to look at the website using a PC and Microsoft IE (don't know the version) and NONE of the formatting defined in the CSS that I uploaded worked!!! Images were in place, tables in place but NO background color or font choice or italics or link hover or font size formatting or any classes I defined....NO FORMATTING defined on the .css appeared!!

I came home and tried my wife's computer in our office (a Dell PC). IE on here computer had the SAME result as work...NO FORMATTING!! But, INTERESTINGLY, her Netscape browser (version 8.0) **DID** have most of the formatting I created with the CSS show CORRECTLY!!

So, my question....why isn't IE reading my CSS?? I THOUGHT I "readied" my HTML correctly and created the CSS correctly!!

Below please find the text of my .css file. I have also included the "<head>" information from my index page. I (believe I) followed all the steps for readying my HTML and creating a .css but not sure why IE doesn't like what I did!

Thank you all VERY MUCH for your help!!

Scott

-------------------------------

(my .css text from just a plain text file and uploaded as such)

body
{
background:#000000; color:#999999; font-family:"Trebuchet MS"; font-style:italic;
}

a:link {color:#999999}
a:visited {color:#999999}
a:active {color:#FFCC00}
a:hover {color:#FFCC00}

marquee
{background:#FFCC00; color:#000000; font-style:italic; font-size:120%
}

.linktable
{
text-align:left; font-style:normal; font-size:125%;
}

.yellow
{
color:#FFCC00;
}

--------------------------

(my "readied" HTML <head> portion with code/DOCTYPE info suggested by htmlcodetutorial.com; <title> and <meta> descriptions removed for easy reading)

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C/DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<html>
<head>

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

<link REL="stylesheet" TYPE="text/css" href="alan.css">
</head>

Corey Bryant · Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:38 pm

What exactly is not working?

_________________
Corey
Loud Info | Loud Worx | Merchant Account Blog

scudder · Joined: 27 Jul 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Florida

Corey Bryant · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 3:06 am

I get confused when the codes are not used to separate everything for some reason and miss a few things from time to time.

scudder · Joined: 27 Jul 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Florida

Hi Corey...

Thank you VERY much for your help and suggestions. I tested your test page as well and it worked for me too!

I do have a couple followup questions if you don't mind...forgive me, I'm VERY new at this!! Smile

At first, I was thinking of dissecting the changes that you might to figure out ON MY OWN how each change affected the successful rendering of my HTML page, however, there were a few too many variables so I'm just going to ask the questions I had in mind Smile

(1) The original DOCTYPE I copied *VERBATIM* from the htmlcodetutorial.com CSS information sections http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/style/_SETUP.html but you mentioned that it was a "bit incorrect". I was wondering what the REASONS were for using your DOCTYPE (which worked!) and my original (which did not) and the "iso" vs. "windows" charset change that you made??

(2) In my original post above, you might have noticed that I was *ATTEMPTING* to create and use an external .css file but failed. I saw that you utilized an Embedded Stylesheet between the <head> tags. I was hoping to AVOID the need to embed style code at the top of EACH AND EVERY one of my pages...hence the external .css attempt. FIRST, do you suggest/prefer an Embedded Stylesheet format?? SECONDLY, if you do not necessarily prefer or suggest that format, HOW do I use the <link REL=...> tag to properly point to my .css file?? I tried to use *YOUR* DOCTYPE and other changes while at the SAME TIME trying to point the browser to the .css file with my original <link REL="...> tag and the page, once again, did not render correctly...it only rendered correctly when I used your Embedded format WITHOUT my <link REL"...> tag. There must be either a problem with my syntax or I am simply confused about how to point the page to the .css file. This is ALL that I had in my header portion of my original HTML:

Corey Bryant · Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 2:55 am

scudder · Joined: 27 Jul 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Florida

Corey Bryant · Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 6:30 am

Is alan.css in the same folder as the HTML page? If so, can you give an URL to the HTML page?
_________________
Corey
Loud Commerce | Loud Worx | Merchant Account Blog

scudder · Joined: 27 Jul 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Florida

Yes. I tried putting the alan.css file in the SAME folder as the webpage. Also tried putting it in the same page as the index.html page.

I'm also pretty sure I tried the FULL html in the format:

Corey Bryant · Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 7:20 am

The syntax is correct - I use almost the same:

scudder · Joined: 27 Jul 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Florida

Corey...

Thanks for your offer to look at my HTML page but it appears I was able to get the page to properly refer to the External .css file!! I enjoy trying to "figure out" any problems with my pages so I tried a few things and was able to get it to work.

Perhaps you could look below to see what I did to make it work and, maybe, EXPLAIN why the change worked for me??

So, my problem was with the page not rendering correctly with IE. In a prior post, you created a test page with my .css style information as an Embedded Stylesheet and that page DID work in IE. I was able to get it to work in IE as well but when I again attempted to reference and External Stylesheet, I again ran into IE problems.

So my original reference link was:

Corey Bryant · Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 12:41 pm

Well you might try the lowercase type instead of TYPE. But without seeing a lot more, I do not know

_________________
Corey
Loud Info | Loud Worx | Electronic Payment Gateways

Leew · Joined: 02 Aug 2006 Posts: 2

Hi Corey,

Just read through your posts with Scott in Florida and I have much the same problem. I am, apparently, using embedded stylesheets. I'm just trying to put up a little landing page for the company I'm an affiliate with.

I'm using Front Page (carefully) and all my formatting and pics show up beautifully until I upload them then nothing when I view page online.

Both HTML landing page and css page are in same location at root under main URL and all pics and background is in images dir correctly.

You can see my code in "source" for
<link rel="stylesheet" href="bottled_water.css" type="text/css">

This is address where page is http://www.grabyourinfo.com/bottled_water.html.
Can you shed any light? I'm not HTML trained (no kidding - ha) but once I learn something it's added to my tool box.

Thanks in advance,
Lee
Clearwater, FL

Corey Bryant · Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 4:37 am

As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with CSS, but your images. When I go to http://www.grabyourinfo.com/images/bottle.jpg it wants to show some image and does not tell me file is not found. The image might be corrupt or the server might not know how to display the correct mime type on the image

The CSS looks like it works just fine with the exception of the background image which goes above to what I was saying. It is showing a background color, etc

_________________
Corey
Loud Commerce |
Loud Worx | Loud Ads

Leew · Joined: 02 Aug 2006 Posts: 2

Thanks Corey,

Duh, I had my FTP program set to ASCII only for a specific purpose and forgot to set it back to AUTO.

Now all's well now. Very Happy

Sometimes you just need an exterior person to say "look at this".

Lee