Mysterious problem with pages not displaying properly.

Hi all,

A colleague of mine has put together a web site which shows up
faultlessly on the browsers I use on two separate computers in my
home. However, it transpires that on many other people's browsers,
the pages don't display properly at all. Sometimes there's missing
text formatting, sometimes the colors don't render properly and in one
case, all someone could see was the original html source code! I'm
baffled! Can anyone identify the problem?

Here's the site: www.newconservativeparty.org

As I say, it displays fine here, but probably not on a browser near
you. :-| The site was created with Serif's PagePlus9, BTW.
--

"Suffer no one to tell you what to think."
Martin Smith, the New Conservative Party.
masmith (AT) new (DOT) extractthis.c...ativeparty.org
http://www.newconservativeparty.org

Previously in alt.html.web-accessibility,alt.html, New Conservative
<78738 (AT) virgin_not_for_mail (DOT) net> said:
[f'ups set to alt.html]

Hi all,

I have multiple personalities?

Sometimes there's missing
text formatting,

Sounds like your code is a mess.

sometimes the colors don't render properly

Could be any number of things. What do you mean by "don't render
properly"? That there aren't any colours? They are just a slightly
different shade to your monitor? Something else?

and in one
case, all someone could see was the original html source code!

This is usually due to it being sent with an incorrect mime type, e.g.
text/plain, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Here's the site: www.newconservativeparty.org

Ugh. No offence, but that is awful. The background image hurts my eyes.
As far as the code goes, it would be mostly the absolute positioning
everywhere that is causing the problems with the text formatting etc.
The incomplete doctype is throwing browsers into quirks mode, too. That
can't be helping.

The site was created with Serif's PagePlus9, BTW.

Then I suggest you throw it out and get something decent.

--
Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 12:02:18 +1100, Mark Parnell
<webmaster (AT) clarkecomputers (DOT) com.au> wrote:

Previously in alt.html.web-accessibility,alt.html, New Conservative
78738 (AT) virgin_not_for_mail (DOT) net> said:
[f'ups set to alt.html]

Hi all,

I have multiple personalities?

Sure, you both do

Sometimes there's missing
text formatting,

Sounds like your code is a mess.

did you take a peek first? no, didn't think so. It's sooo much easier to
deliver with trivial markup.

...
The site was created with Serif's PagePlus9, BTW.

Then I suggest you throw it out and get something decent.

'something' being a decent knowledge of HTML/CSS.

--
William Tasso

It was somewhere outside Barstow when New Conservative
<78738 (AT) virgin (DOT) net> wrote:

However, it transpires that on many other people's browsers,
the pages don't display properly at all.

The site was created with Serif's PagePlus9, BTW.

Well that's you problem. The whole site coding is complete crap and
it looks like it's Serif's fault.

I suggest an upgrade to FrontPage.

New Conservative wrote:

A colleague of mine has put together a web site which shows up
faultlessly on the browsers I use on two separate computers in my
home.

You apparently don't have a sufficient variety of browsers for good
testing.

However, it transpires that on many other people's browsers,
the pages don't display properly at all. Sometimes there's missing
text formatting, sometimes the colors don't render properly and in
one
case, all someone could see was the original html source code! I'm
baffled! Can anyone identify the problem?

There's more than one problem. Your code is a horrible mess. Also,
many of your pages are served by your server with MIME type
"text/plain", which instructs the browser to render them as plain text
instead of HTML; the more standards-compliant browsers do this as
requested, resulting in the displaying of raw code instead of a
rendered page. Your use of filenames without extensions is probably
confusing the server in this regard.

--
Dan

Previously in alt.html.web-accessibility,alt.html, Dan <dan (AT) tobias (DOT) name>
said:

Also,
many of your pages are served by your server with MIME type
"text/plain",

Aha! I _was_ right. I only looked at the front page though, which is why
I didn't see it myself.

--
Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au

On Tue, 08 Mar 2005 00:44:36 GMT, New Conservative
<78738 (AT) virgin_not_for_mail (DOT) net> wrote:

Hi all,

A colleague of mine has put together a web site which shows up
faultlessly on the browsers I use on two separate computers in my
home. However, it transpires that on many other people's browsers,
the pages don't display properly at all. Sometimes there's missing
text formatting, sometimes the colors don't render properly and in one
case, all someone could see was the original html source code! I'm
baffled! Can anyone identify the problem?

Here's the site: www.newconservativeparty.org

As I say, it displays fine here, but probably not on a browser near
you. :-| The site was created with Serif's PagePlus9, BTW.

First of all, you need to get the site to validate. This means you'll
need someone to go into the code and correct all the faults. That
should really be your first objective. It may well mean that some of
the effects or areas of display that you like a lot will have to be
abandoned as they rely (I'm guessing) on proprietary code that some
mainstream browsers simply cannot render properly.
Keep everything simple and you'll be on the right road.

BB
--
www.kruse.co.uk/ SEO (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
Affordable SEO!
--

Here's one problem:

..PPStyle0-P
{
margin:0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align:left;
line-height:1.29;
}

You can't use fractions when determining dimensions in pixels. A pixel
is a pixel; there are no fractional pixels.

On Tue, 08 Mar 2005 02:07:41 +0000, Andy Dingley
<dingbat (AT) codesmiths (DOT) com> wrote:

I suggest an upgrade to FrontPage.

No, no, no. FrontPage is crap, too, if only because it creates
proprietary code not rendered in standards-compliant browsers like
Mozilla, Firefox and Opera.

If you need to spend money, get something good -- like HomeSite.

Steve Sundberg wrote:

Here's one problem:

.PPStyle0-P
{
margin:0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align:left;
line-height:1.29;
}

You can't use fractions when determining dimensions in pixels. A
pixel
is a pixel; there are no fractional pixels.

In that particular case, the "1.29" actually has no unit shown, which
is a standards violation in itself.

--
Dan