My general thoughts on style sheets: Since they are not supported consistently by current browsers (or at all by the lower browsers lots of people still use), Style sheets are best for "icing on the cake". Remove the CSS link, work on your page with HTML until you get it working the way you want it to, then reinstate the link and see what happens. Make adjustments so the style sheet adds value to 4+ users without crippling appearance for your other visitors (according to the browser sniffer in my site tracker, at least 27% of my visitors use browsers that do not support CSS at all).
Nico-my links is at: speculativevision.com/network/
I'm not sure if it will be helpful or not since I'm using a heavily modified version of the CSS file and have customized my HTML to accomodate it. It would be very helpful if you posted the URL to your site so we could see what you're seeing.
Crisco: It sounds like you're doing fine modifying the files to suit your site and are learning a lot along the way. Like always, it's a lot of trial and error so just keep plugging away! The x-small, small, etc. problem you are having is classic browser incompatiblity. For instance, xx-small SHOULD be equal to <font size="1">, but Netscape thinks x-small is <font size="1> and renders xx-small as super tiny, illegible text. Put simply, because of browser differences, this is just not a good way to determine font size. Points or pixels is better supported, or easier yet, just eliminate the font size declarations from the style sheet and use regular HTML on the page itself (which is better for backwards compatiblity anyway as I noted above). Of course, the REAL answer is for IE and NS to stop playing around and support the standard the way it was written in the first place!
Chris: RE: using points:
Ummm...isn't that one of the main purposes of CSS? If I wanted the user to be able to control the font size, why would I specify it? Or did I miss your point? Also, EM's are still a little buggy in NS (5.0 promises to be better...we'll see) so I don't think this is a good option for now.
RE: background colors
Not specifying a background color for the element in the CSS file at all is better...it's automatically transparent. I only specify a background color when I definitely want it to be different from my page background...makes life easier. I wasn't aware of the border: 0 trick. Good tip...I'll have to try it out.
A couple more good references:
Webmonkey's tutorial (easy to understand, especially if you are a beginner with CSS): http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/stylesheets/tutorials/tutorial1.html
Project Cool's CSS browser compatibility chart (good quick reference):
http://www.projectcool.com/develop/reference/css_style.html
Final thought: Just to make things difficult, when I downloaded IE 5 I found out it handles CSS slightly different from IE 4 (surprize surprize). If you haven't downloaded it yet, it would be a good idea so you can be sure M$ didn't sneak in any new troubles for ya' (be sure to select the "compatiblity mode" from the advanced options...it saves enough of the IE4 setup so you can use both for checking your site).
Nico-my links is at: speculativevision.com/network/
I'm not sure if it will be helpful or not since I'm using a heavily modified version of the CSS file and have customized my HTML to accomodate it. It would be very helpful if you posted the URL to your site so we could see what you're seeing.
Crisco: It sounds like you're doing fine modifying the files to suit your site and are learning a lot along the way. Like always, it's a lot of trial and error so just keep plugging away! The x-small, small, etc. problem you are having is classic browser incompatiblity. For instance, xx-small SHOULD be equal to <font size="1">, but Netscape thinks x-small is <font size="1> and renders xx-small as super tiny, illegible text. Put simply, because of browser differences, this is just not a good way to determine font size. Points or pixels is better supported, or easier yet, just eliminate the font size declarations from the style sheet and use regular HTML on the page itself (which is better for backwards compatiblity anyway as I noted above). Of course, the REAL answer is for IE and NS to stop playing around and support the standard the way it was written in the first place!
Chris: RE: using points:
Quote:
This is true, the only drawback is that the site then won't scale if the user changes the browsers size.RE: background colors
Quote:
I did try setting all these to transparent but this caused other problems...A couple more good references:
Webmonkey's tutorial (easy to understand, especially if you are a beginner with CSS): http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/stylesheets/tutorials/tutorial1.html
Project Cool's CSS browser compatibility chart (good quick reference):
http://www.projectcool.com/develop/reference/css_style.html
Final thought: Just to make things difficult, when I downloaded IE 5 I found out it handles CSS slightly different from IE 4 (surprize surprize). If you haven't downloaded it yet, it would be a good idea so you can be sure M$ didn't sneak in any new troubles for ya' (be sure to select the "compatiblity mode" from the advanced options...it saves enough of the IE4 setup so you can use both for checking your site).
