external stylesheet doesn't display right

[Irvy]

Hi guys,
I am very new to web design and foolishly promised a friend to polish up his website. I have successfully mastered text changes and smaller things, but got a problem with replacing an image on the website that is encorporated in the external css file. When I first went onto the ftp server of the existing website I couldn't find the "main" html file (you know the one you get when right click - view page source). Every page is in php with a global stylesheet for the graphical display. In order to get my css changes to display, I have created this "main" html file myself by pasting the code into notepad. I completed my changes in css and there were also some changes to make to the "main" html file in order to get everything displayed as I wanted to. When I then copied the new css file onto the server, it was displayed in a weird way with a menu box 20px higher than it should be (although it had been fine when I tested it offline). As on the server there is no "main" html file, I don't know what to do. How on earth did the original developers get the spreadsheet right if that file is missing??? Where is that file? Please please help me, because I have promised that friend that I could get it done. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[chubbs]

post a link please

[ukgeoff]

Not quite sure what you are getting at here. I think there is some confusion.

There is no such thing as a "main" file. When you right click on any page in a browser and select 'View source', that is something the browser takes care of. It doesn't fetch anything different from the server which is what you seem to be suggesting.

Images are not incorporated in any css file, external or otherwise. You can make reference to the location of an image for attributes such as 'background-image'

I think you need to rethink what it is you are trying to ask and if possible provide a link to the problem page.

[Irvy]

http://www.realrunners.co.uk/

see that it is all messed up. there is a folder called "includes" on the server that includes htlm files about the header (and the pic and the menu are part of the header). maybe it's that? dunno!

[Irvy]

AND in IE the menu box is displayed in a different location compared to Firefox

[chubbs]

messed up?? i dont get it.....

[Irvy]

thanks Geoff. The problem is that I don't know myself. The little I know is that I thought that every website had a thing like a "main" html file - basically the file that you write when building the site. Or am I wrong? In this case here: there is the text all in php files and the outer frame is taken care of by the css file. That is what I have understood. From my very very beginner knowledge I thought I would find an html file somewhere but I didn't. Sorry about my untechy and unprecise language.

[Irvy]

don;t you see how horrible the display is Chubbs? how the big top image is displayed and the menu box? what is it that you don't get?

[Irvy]

oh.. i figured it out just in this moment.... though in Mozilla it doesn't display as nicely as in IE. Wonder why?

[ukgeoff]

Having looked the site, there a couple of css tweaks the could be made so that the site renders the same in Firefox and IE.

I can see nothing about the site that obviously suggests itself as to why these pages have the .php extension. They look as if they could just as well have had the .html extention.

Do you know of any server side processing that warrents them being php files?

I note that the header image is not shown to its full height in either Firefox or IE but this might have been a diliberate choice.

I don't want to sound unkind but are you out of your depth and is it time to tell your friend that you can't do it after all?

[chubbs]

im using Opera...it looks ok to me