Help needed with my website HTML

[jkash]

I need some help from you real web designers out there. I am having trouble having the links at the top of my Prius site staying the color I want them to. Even more strange, is that my site looks different on all three browsers I have checked it on. (Safari, IE, Firefox) Any help would be appreciated.

I am using Dreamweaver.

Thanks,

Jeff

[DonDNH]

I compared your html with a couple of pages on my site. One difference I see could be part of your problem. On the line 4 of your html code is the meta tag:

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

my site has use the tag:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">

You might try this character set to see if it makes any difference in the presentation of your pages.

[bruceha_2000]

I compared your html with a couple of pages on my site. One difference I see could be part of your problem. On the line 4 of your html code is the meta tag:

my site has use the tag:

You might try this character set to see if it makes any difference in the presentation of your pages.

I looked at several websites and if charset was defined it was always iso-8859-1

Different browsers will show things differently and are tolerant (or intolerant) of different coding errors. Additionally, things like javascript are sometimes dicey in how they are handled.

[jkash]

Thanks for replying Don and Bruce. I am kind of at a loss. Bruce you are correct about the way the browsers handle code. I also checked the site on my wife's pc using IE and it looks totally different than on my Mac using IE.

I'll probably keep looking for answers, but may have to settle for the site looking different on each browser.

Jeff

[bruceha_2000]

I don't know what you want the links to look like (ie what color) but the ones in the table are hardcoded to the same value as the default unvisited link. I think that is why they don't change to the visited color when you return.

I personally do not like the mess created by page generators, especially not the junk put out by Word or WordPro when you convert the doc to HTML.

One thing you'll notice on your page is that you use a total of 2 font face sets ("Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" and "Times New Roman, Times, serif"). For those not in the know, it is a list of fonts to use in order as a given client may not have the specified font. Although with these, they'll be there. The first set is used only in the table, the other set in every other link on the page. In fact: <font size="3" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"> shows up all over the place. Probably 30% of your page is unnecessary redundant tags. Does Dreamweaver support Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)? If it thinks it REALLY needs to specify all this information for EVERY link, at least the source will be a lot smaller and easier to read. At the very least, the BODY could contain the defaults and be over-ridden only when necessary within the tags enclosed.

Look at this page: http://www.geocities.com/cvsc_us/CVO/cvo_2...004_results.htm You'll find these lines:
<style type="text/css" media="all">
@import "../cvsc.css";
</style>
The style sheet is here: http://www.geocities.com/cvsc_us/cvsc.css

You wouldn't care to look at the junk Word put out to create the same thing. EVERY single tag had font and size specified and the file was HUGE.

[john1701a]

To be as universally compatible as possible, eliminate the tags entirely. Not specifying anything will allow the browser to default to it's own settings instead... which almost always work.

With the exception of the home & navigation, my website is totally void of page settings... like charset.

[jkash]

Thanks for all the info Bruce. I don't understand a good amount of it though. Dreamweaver does support CSS but I have no idea how to create a website using it.

The funny thing about what you said is that the table links don't change. I don't want them to, but on the browsers I have access to they are changing. That's what I was trying to fix.

As for the fonts, I can change the fonts to be only Times New Roman and Arial. Would that help clean up the html?

Jeff

[bruceha_2000]

The funny thing about what you said is that the table links don't change. I don't want them to, but on the browsers I have access to they are changing. That's what I was trying to fix.

Why? The purpose of the color change is to let people know they have already seen that page. There is a vlink attribute (visited link) in the Body tag, you could specify that as the same color as the others. Of course then all the later links would stay the same as well. If you REALLY want to get fancy, you could create images of the text you want to stay static, set the background for the table cell to that image and have no text in the Anchor (<A>) tag. But I wouldn't :-)

The problem with browsers is they don't adhere to the standards. Some, like MS and Netscape had wars, adding in new tags that weren't in the spec and weren't supported by the other. Then they tried to get people to use the tags, making the pages useful only in their browser.

As for the fonts, I can change the fonts to be only Times New Roman and Arial. Would that help clean up the html?
Jeff

Only slightly, the source would still specify it on every GD line.
I agree with John. Generally, the less junk you put in, the more likely the page will work on all browsers and look similar.

[pkjohna]

I pulled up your site on my PC using Opera, IE, and Firefox; all 3 load with the same general appearance. The "followed link" color behavior seems to be related to how each browser handles caching and page refresh. Opera and IE use the followed link color as expected immediately after following the link and returning to the page while Firefox required a page refresh to show the followed link color. I also notice that each of the links at the top point to a tag on the same page as opposed to another site or different page within yours. This may explain why that table of links sometimes behaves a little differently.

I can't speak to behavior on a Mac but I might attribute to a higher degree of "Independent Spirit" for the Mac.

[jkash]

Thanks John. As long as it looks ok to you experts, I guess I'll just go with it the way it is. It just bugs me that it looks different on every browser I have looked at it on.

The really strange thing, is that my other site, the one I use for school, I have the links in the table that do not change color on any browser that I know of. It was created in FrontPage and exported into Dreamweaver.

Very weird.

Jeff