When I have

BODY {
background-color: #CCCCCC;
margin: 0;
position: relative;
}

In a linked style sheet the background color of the page does not change. However if I put it on the page between the head tags the pages background color does change.

The frustorating thing about this is that if I change other things in the linked style sheet (e.g. the color of a table cell), the change is readily apparent on the webpage. So the style sheet is linked correctly, but I have this problem.

Any idea's as to why this problem chooses to haunt me?

Thanks
Nathan

do we get to see the style sheet in use somewhere?

Uh, yeah :-)

Webpage: http://superiorphoneservice.com/test.php
Stylesheet: http://superiorphoneservice.com/ihavestyle.css

You can see right now the background is grey because I have that code in the header.

First remove your css from webpage:

<style type="text/css">
BODY {
background-color: #CCCCCC;
margin: 0;
height: 100%;
width: 100%;
position: relative;
}
</style>

Then remove from ihavestyle.css first line:

<style type="text/css">

and last line:

</style>

Shivaji

Ahhh, so you don't put the style tags inside the .css document. Didn't know that, thanks.

Right, you don't need tags in external css document.

You also don't need to set position:relative on the BODY, that's totally unnecessary.

Now, if you have a "wrapper" that holds the rest of your layout, adding position:relative to that makes sense.