I must have broke something here ...

[thing]

Hi all,
Having some problems with a new site, here - basically it falls to pieces in IE 5.2 on my Mac.

Looks perfect in Safari, Firefox and Navigator, and did look fine in Explorer, briefly. Now it doesn't - the page is totally messed up. All I did before it went haywire was removed some associations then popped them back ... this put them in a different order. Now I find if I try reordering the associations I can get the site back to almost how it should be but then I add in a further stylesheet and bang, it's gone again.

So I guess I'm asking, firstly, does the order of the associated CSS files matter? Seems to me it does.

Secondly anyone be kind enough to look at my page and let me know if it displays correctly in Explorer for them (Mac or PC and trust me, you'll know if it's wrong, the footer, for a start is all bashed up around the nav area) and if it doesn't perhaps give me some guidance (real layman's terms please, I'm a designer, not a coder) to help me fix it!

Many thanks, in advance.

[tsw]

So I guess I'm asking, firstly, does the order of the associated CSS files matter? Seems to me it does.

Depends, you might have some rules that overwrite previous rules and if order changes it will overwrite wrong rule.

Secondly anyone be kind enough to look at my page and let me know if it displays correctly in Explorer for them

Looks fine for me (winxp: FF1.5 and explorer)

your html is valid (which is good), css has some warnings (but nothing bad).

you could put all css rules in one big file and maybe take some rules out (I dont think you need all of those rules)

[Russ]

Not sure why all the 'relative' stuff, but anyway, order would matter for CSS, but my guess is floats or widths or the relative stuff or a combination of them? IE Mac users are dwindling but you may want to take a look at:
http://macedition.com/cb/ie5macbugs/index.html

Hope this helps,
Russ
p.s. I think green text on green menu is not very accessible? and the font seems a bt small?

[thing]

tsw: Thanks for looking, I knew the code was valid (first thing I checked) and the CSS has problems (though why and how to fix them I don't know).

I know I'm 'bad' but I'm terrible at reading instructions so tend to go by trial and error to make things work rather than learning what the hell I'm doing. This means, to edit things like the CMSMS templates to make them look how I want I just make a small change (that I can easily reverse) check the results, then make another small change. Eventually I usually get the thing to look how I want! Unfortunately though I've currently got no way to check my sites in Explorer since the Mac version is both way out of date and no longer supported. I suppose I have to either assume that if the code validates then it'll probably work or get Virtual PC, Windows (no idea what version) and Explorer!

I'm nervous to copy all the individual CSS files that are used to make my site work in to one big file simply because I may find myself bogged down trying to work out what's what! At the moment I use the supplied templates and leave them as separate files letting CMSMS group them together. However if I were to try this would I be right in thinking I should just create a new CSS stylesheet, copy each of the sheets currently associated with my layout in to it, then make that new one the only one associated with my page layout?

Maybe I'll give it a bash - after making a backup!

Russ: Sorry, not sure what you mean about the 'relative' stuff. I know so very little about CSS and make things work, as mentioned above, by trial and error. Even the link you kindly supplied goes over my head! I really must take time to learn more, but generally don't have it.

I take your point about the accessibility of the menus, thanks. Changed them to a dark grey and increased the size of the font slightly. Better I think.

Thanks both - your time is appreciated.

I have two other, unrelated questions, though in all fairness fixing my IE problem (even accepting that Mac IE users are rare now I'd like to fix it) is probably more important.

1. How can I make (or put back) the rollover colour change on the child menus? The 'Menus/Navigation systems' button still has children and I do want them on a white background, but I'd like them to have a rollover colour. Again - layman's instructions please!

2. Is it possible to use space under the nav stuff for images and if so how would I put a pic there? I don't mind that said image would move up and down when the menu expands/collapses.

Sorry to write so much ... just trying to make everything crystal clear.

Thanks again.

Greg

[thing]

Ok, some playing around and reading (and honestly trying to understand) the data on the link you supplied, Russ, leads me to believe the problem is caused by the 'float' thing. Removing it totally does put the IE layout back to almost how it should be, except the nav stretches the width of the page, and the content falls underneath it.

However I'm wondering if I should even worry about this. As you rightly point out IE Mac is getting rarer, and if the site looks right in IE PC then all's well I suspect!

Now if only I could work out some way to proof my sites in the PC version of Explorer without having to get Virtual PC etc.!

[kwansan]

Hi,

I viewed your site in FF, NN, and IE6 and everything looks fine to me.    Nice clean design!

[Russ]

Sorry 'thing' no confusion meant (relative is todo with CSS), although the menus and the font size still look the same to me? Anyway for lots of good help with CSS and as a great resource I would suggest the CSS Discuss List:

http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d

Join and ask your question there giving links to html page and css. There are some very good Mac IE gurus there

Hope this helps
Russ
P.S. Unless you have one of the new Intel Mac's then it is Virual PC for you, or another cheap PC? I have IE 4 through 6 installed on my Virtual PC - and another PC with IE Beta 7 installed (although I'm largely ignoring that for the moment as it is a beta.)

[thing]

Thanks kwansan, with you, the other two kind folk here and another mate I'm confident this site looks fine in IE, I'll ignore my nasty old Mac IE version!

Russ, I think I was possibly makinig changes to the site when you tried to look at it - it's now got the nav on the right with slightly larger, grey type. Thanks for the CSS link by the way. I've got loads of places to go to read about CSS but little patience, sadly! My problem though - I really should learn more of this stuff and stop making stupid mistakes that end up with me bugging helpful (and patient) people like yourself!

Thought about a cheap PC (ugh, makes my blood freeze) but I think for now VPC is the way forward. An Intel Mac is on the cards when the desktop machines arrive, Bootcamp goes commercial and the main software I use goes Universal Binary.

Thanks again everyone ... be well.

Greg