> I had to change your CSS imgs to relative, instead of absolute because very few browsers support it

Something to keep in mind here: often in EE, the same Template can look like it’s appearing at different “directory levels” as far as the browser is concerned.  In cases like that, relative paths are very dangerous and will almost always fail except in the one case they’re designed for.

Example:
Let’s say you design your CSS for the main “index” Template (in the “weblog” Template Group) on your site.  The same Template can be accessed from:

http://www.example.com/index.php
http://www.example.com/index.php/weblog/
http://www.example.com/index.phpweblog/index/
http://www.example.com/index.php/weblog/C23/
http://www.example.com/index.php/weblog/index/my_first_entry/

As far as I know CSS 1 does not have full browser support for absolute img paths. earbrain, you may have to put the images directly into the templates for absolute paths in this case. I will research and let you know.

Thank you Chris, that is very useful information. I am building my EE site right now, and you just helped me side step a huge headache.

I’ve never run into a problem using absolute paths in CSS before.  But I’ve never used every browser out there.  AFAIK, all the major ones (IE/win, IE/mac, Mozilla, Opera, Safari) should support support something like this:

All of those and Netscape (except Netscape 4) do support the reletive path like that your example. I haven’t found any info on absolute paths yet though. He has absolute paths in the CSS, but none of the images except the background show in IE6. I am almost thinking he should keep the background in the CSS, and then all the other images he should put in the HTML page.

My example is an absolute path.  Note the forward slash (”/”) at the front of the path.

Thanks everyone. I just monkeyed around with the code until it worked on all browsers�sort of like the example of monkeys eventually typing the correct Lord’s Prayer after 500 million years.

An excellent CSS editor for the Mac is CSSEdit.  It allows you to quickly create complex CSS files.  Personally, I work faster with BBEdit, but CSSEdit has it definite strong points.

Yes CSSEdit is wonderful.  Also HyperEdit is incredibly useful to those who are coding the XHTML side by hand. 

I’m a former GoLive user too.  I still think it is the best WYSIWYG editor and I still do use it when a client isn’t interested about standards or when I have a very tight deadline for something (Nothing beats tables for sheer speed and compatibility).  However, when I can, I don’t even open GoLive anymore.  There are some great XHTML tutorials and those combined with the above two programs made learning CSS and XHTML not so bad.

When you code by hand it is much easier to find where you made a mistake if something is weird in IE. 

Oh, and VirtualPC works well for testing sites in IE for PC.  I have not had any success with BrowserCam and other sites like it.  You often can’t see the whole webpage.  And you can’t put the mouse over links and such to check mouse-over effects.

Jamie

I also used to use GoLive.  In fact, I used it when it first came out and was called GoLive Cyberstudio.  At first I hated it because it created too much bloated code.  By the second version, they had cleaned up their code a bit, so I started using it all the time.  This was back in ‘97, ‘98.  After a while, feature creap began to happen and it became a swollen monstrosity of an app.  Dreamweaver is just as bad.  In 2001, I went back to using BBEdit for all my coding.

You’re right about it being easier to find errors in hand-coded pages.  The amount of code is a fraction of what you’d get with most WYSIWYG editors.

For those on a Mac, there is a little app called Paparazzi that takes screenshots of the _entire_ site, not just what’s showing in the browser window.  I had been looking for a Mac app that did this, and this fits the bill perfectly.

Paparazzi is one of the coolist programs around! I found out about it a month or so ago, and it is great! can’t say enough about it. I just wish you could select different file outputs but nothing Photoshop can’t fix.

On the issue on images and absolute paths…

When I was redesigning EE Design, I discovered that my header and background images were not loading in Mac IE 5.2.3.  I googled forever and finally found a site that had a list of a whole slew of bugs for that browser, including one that stated that for Mac IE 5.2.3 the quotes in absolute paths had to be double quotes (”) not single quotes (’)—can you believe that?  I made that simple change and the images loaded in that browser.

Granted, nobody uses Mac IE 5.2.3 anymore, but I wanted to make it work.  Funny what kind of browser bugs are out there.