CSS disappears on HD checks | WPDFD.com Forums

Stan said:

02/28/04, 059 53 2004 2004:%i:1077987207 11:53:27

Here's a real puzzle. A few days ago, whenever I checked my pages prior to uploading them, they were not influenced by my style sheets. They had default fonts etc. This problem occured with IE 5.1, Mozilla 1.2.1 and Netscape 7.01. Strangely, Netscape 4.65 displayed the pages the way they were intended to look. All the pages look fine on all the above mentioned browsers when I view them from the net instead of my hard drive. I'm using Mac OS 9.1.

Does anyone know what's going on and what I can do about it?

Dzblack said:

02/28/04, 059 06 2004 2004:%i:1077998771 15:06:11

This is a good subject but not easily explained. I remember this problem vividly with OS9.

Working with Dreamweaver and IE on the Mac, we could not get our recent CSS changes to show up in IE (some version of 5.X). We tried everything from closing IE and reopening, to clearing the cache and still no visible evidence of our style changes. Only the net worked, the hard drive did not.

In short, the solution is not easily identifiable to me. All I know is this: We now have OS 10.2.8 and DreamweaverMX and Safari as our testing browser. All changes to CSS are readily available on the fly from our hard drive.

Yes, I know, this is not pinning down the problem. It only provides our solution.

OS9 was buggy as far as I'm concerned. A bunch of weird problems such as yours went away after our upgrade.

Hope this helps.

Stan said:

02/28/04, 059 31 2004 2004:%i:1078000276 15:31:16

My plan was to hold out a couple of more months so I can upgrade by buying a whole new machine. What would make this problem show up all of a sudden? I've had OS 9 for a few years now.

Dzblack said:

02/28/04, 059 41 2004 2004:%i:1078000875 15:41:15

Stan, I do not know that answer. All I do know is that support for IE on the Mac is dead with Safari so strong.

I will look into this further, call my Mac buddies about this, see if they know the exact answer.

Dave

Baxter said:

02/28/04, 059 37 2004 2004:%i:1078025868 22:37:48

I'm still on 9 and that's a new one one me. If you're setting up "sites" in dreamweaver or whatever, it sounds like a path issue that's resolved when the files are uploaded and in place.

Joe Gillespie said:

02/29/04, 060 55 2004 2004:%i:1078048520 04:55:20

I have never seen this problem on OS9, or anything else. As baxter says, it's most likely a path problem, but that's easy to check. Look at the path in the
If the .css file is at the same level as the page it should be

href="mystyles.css"

up a level it's

href="../mystyles.css"

in another directory its

href="../directoryname/mystyles.css"

Watch out for the notorious

href="/mystyles.css"

that's is going to fail on a hard disk because a slash on its own has a special meaning and only works properly on UNIX.

Dzblack said:

02/29/04, 060 14 2004 2004:%i:1078067651 10:14:11

Stan, I remember this problem now. I believe it has everything to do with setting your links as Relative to: Document or Site Root.

If your pages are all set Relative to: Site Root, then you may encounter the problem mentioned in your first post.

Go back and check all links on all pages and set them to Relative to: Document and I believe the problem will go away.

Dave

Jdenny said:

02/29/04, 060 26 2004 2004:%i:1078072009 11:26:49

Checking your paths was going to be exactly my advice, I have started to ensure the work-in-progress on my hard drive is in a directory structure identical to that on the web server.

Stan said:

02/29/04, 060 38 2004 2004:%i:1078094316 17:38:36

Here is the link from the head of the pages.

It's been the same for months.

I haven't moved the style sheet or added new folders to the folder that holds the site. I get the problem not only if I open a page using the "preview in browser" feature in Dreamweaver, but also if I just drag the file onto the brower's icon.

I tried updating from 9.1 to 9.2.1 and saw no difference.

Dzblack said:

03/01/04, 061 40 2004 2004:%i:1078148406 08:40:06

Stan...root-relative links are interpreted by servers, not by browsers, so if you open a local page that uses root-relative links in your browser, the links don't work. You will have to preview from the server, not your local files.

Go to the HELP menu in Dreamweaver and type in: Site root-relative paths .

That may help you.

Baxter said:

03/01/04, 061 35 2004 2004:%i:1078151719 09:35:19

I've never had a problem with using relative links locally, but your local directory/file structure MUST match the server if you want it to work the same.

Dzblack said:

03/01/04, 061 35 2004 2004:%i:1078158909 11:35:09

Stan...here's another thing to check...in your Dreamweaver Preferences, Preview in Browser...uncheck the "Preview Using Temporary File"

This bypasses the temporary copy and goes directly to the document for preview and server debugging. I have found the temporary file in dreamweaver to be buggy on my Mac.

Also, I'm waiting for a reply from another forum about this issue. We will get this pinned down and solved one way or another.