I inherited a website, and am working from no knowledge, trying to teach myself webdesign. I want to start a new look from scratch. I have been using dreamweaver, and on trial my early efforts look fine in IE, Chrome and Safari when I am offline. But, I have just tried uploading a trial page to the main site, and I suspect I am missing some important files - flash and layout are only working in IE - can anyone give me any clues where I am going wrong?

The new sample page is www.julianrhind-tutt.co.uk/index1.html

Your stylesheets are being linked to documents on your computer. Fix that and you should be ok with most of your problems. Validating your code can also help with cross browser problems.

Ah, so I just need to work out which extra documents I need to bring over, and it should work? Thank you - I will try that.

What I mean is that in your XHTML instead of this:

<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/CSS/Level3_1.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

You have this:

<link href="file:///C|/Documents and Settings/Kim/Desktop/newJRTsite/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><link href="file:///C|/Documents and Settings/Kim/Desktop/testsite/CSS/Level3_1.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

I would also recommend that you keep your stylesheets in one central location...Either in a CSS folder or loose with your XHTML files.

I have followed your advice and the style is now displaying perfectly - thank you! I knew it would be a silly error...

My one remaining problem so far is that I have a flash document which again, plays as it should on loading in IE, but not in the other formats.

Here is the code I am using:


<object classid="clsid27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/s...rsion=6,0,29,0" width="270" height="80">
<param name="movie" value="images/biker2.swf">
<param name="quality" value="high">
<param name="LOOP" value="false">
<embed src="biker2.swf" width="270" height="80" loop="false" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed>
</object>


Is this that I don't have the right plug ins on my own browsers, or do I need to code this differently?

Thanks so much for your help.

You're welcome!

Try this one instead:

<object
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="/images/biker2.swf" 
width="270" height="80" title="">
<param name="movie" value="/images/biker2.swf" />
</object>

Their are a couple ways to do this, but this is the one I like and I know works on IE6, IE7, IE8 & FF. Make sure your swf file is in the images folder (personally I like it loose with the XHTML) and add a title between the quotes for SEO purposes.

Brilliant! Thank you! I had to add a line to stop it looping indefinitely, but it now works exactly as I envisaged.

Many thanks for you help - you have saved me hours of headscratching and frustration.

The alternative way to stop looping is to add it actually into the Flash document with Stop(); (my preferred method).

Thank you - I did try that before but was clearly getting something wrong. I will leave that for another day, but for now I am very pleased with the result.

Thanks again

When you inserted the Action did you remember to move it to the end of the animation? By default Flash will stick it in the first keyframe.

I don't think I did - I just inserted the action I will check and see if that makes the difference......