as i mentioned above, my last attempt at a website was back in the days of a million nested tables.

Yah.. I remember those 'old days' all too well

ok, what ive done here is modify the contact php file, and given the inputs a class (contactinput)

working great in firefox. the email inputbox needs a little adjustment in width.
The problem im having now is, it doesnt appear to be pulling its width in IE7, from the IE7 stylesheet.
if i modify Style.css it will adjust the widths, but when i modify Style-IE.css, nothing happens to the width.

the actual stylesheet for IE is loaded with a conditional comment, because everything else that ive had to tweak IE specific, looks just fine.

this is IE 7's style info for these inputs.

input.contactinput{
width: 273px;
border: 1px solid black;
}

basically, im just trying to get all the boxes to line up nicely now, and the email box is a little bit longer than the edge of the textarea, so it needs to be pulled back about 3 pixels.

lastly, whats the difference between input.contactinput and input#contactinput?

{input.contactinput} represents any input element with a class of "contactinput" on it, while {input#contactinput} is a unique input with an id of "contactinput" on it.

ok, i understand what your saying, but im still not totally clear on how they actually differ.

anyway, the main problem im having now, is that the IE specialized css file doesnt seem to be loading, when im using IE.
it seems to be working on my actual index, but not the rest of the pages.

if i adjust the height of my bmibody it will change on the index page, but doesnt seem to apply to the other pages. This is an IE only problem, and im also having the same problem with some other styling of the actual contact form. Ive setup the php files output to use classes, and once again, editing them works fine in firefox, but no changes appear to apply in IE.

im lost on this, unless its just me.

Do you have the conditional comments on every page ?? If not, you need to do so.

yes, they are there on every page

This one really baffles me..... there doesnt seem to be any reason that it shouldn't load.....but its not.

omg..... i had the path wrong on the other pages ......

It's always the little things that will get you !!