XHTML causing CSS problem

Hi everyone,

I've recently converted a website of mine to XHTML. However, I've found that on older IE browsers, it's causing a problem.

The main page should be centred, via the CSS I've used, but it's not in these browsers. This has only changed since the XHTML conversion.

The URL is:
http://copyplus.artisswebdesign.co.uk

Any thoughts/suggestions on what I need to do?

Many thanks
David.

For starters, get rid of this line from the top of your pages.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

It's not mandatory and it throws IE into quirks mode.

While you were taking the trouble to upgrade to xhtml, it would have been a good idea to have got rid of tables as a layout tool and used div's instead and used an unordered list for your menu.

You should go through your pages and remove all the 'px' from width and height attributes. The 'px' is not proper xhtml.

Also the target attribute is deprecated in xhtml so an alternative if you must use it needs to be found. Opening new windows these days is generally frowned upon from an accessibility viewpoint.

Suggest you tidy your css file up so that each style block and each attribute within the block start on a new line. It will make it a lot easier to read and debug if and when required.

Also you should use all lowercase, e.g., table not TABLE. You will get away with it now but if you decide to go from transitional to strict xhtml, it will cause you problems.

Your CSS when viewed is one big ass horizontal line of code so I am not going to mess with that but one thing I did notice is this:

your background statement should be:

background: #colorvaluehere url(../images/foo.jpg) top center repeat-y;

Also good to note is IE 5.x etc will not support margin:0 auto; you have to text-align center the body and then text-align:left; your container to compensate.

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No, it should be #fff url("...images/foo.jpg") 50% 0 repeat-y;

"top center" should be reversed, but "50% 0" uses less code anyway.

:o You don't need the quotes when using a file path as far as I know and are you sure ...images will work? from my experience ../images is/has been the way to go. ".." being root/subfolder/file and you are right it is x then y.. grargh.

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