Bert Coules

My newly-revamped site is now live at http://www.bertcoules.co.uk . Thanks again for all the help. I ran the coding through the W3C markup validator. It picked up this in index.php which is reported as a "Duplicate ID" error: <div id="caption_bar"> <p class="caption"> Sherlock Holmes </p> </div> <div id="caption_bar"> <p class="caption"> A Wizard of Earthsea </p> </div> <div id="caption_bar"> <p class="caption"> Lost Empires </p> </div> <div id="caption_bar"> <p class="caption"> Mutiny on the Bounty </p> </div> Is this bad practice? It certainly seems to work, and does exactly what I want it to, with the "caption_bar" set to span a quarter of the overall width of the display, but is there a more legitimate way of doing it? Many thanks.

Tezzo thanks, it's useful to have another alternative method.

Thanks for the replies. If I needed to apply that formatting in more than one instance I'd put it into the stylesheet, but for a one-off it seems more sensible to put it in the php file.

Is it possible to insert an extra space between two particular paragraphs equivalent to one and a half line heights? Like this (though this isn't to scale): Paragraph one (1 blank line) Paragraph two (1.5 blank lines) Paragraph three (1 blank line) Paragraph four I know about setting the paragraph spacing globally, but I need it to happen just once. I tried setting an increased height for a single paragraph, but that affects the spacing both before and after it. Edited to add: Someone elsewhere kindly advised me to apply a style to paragraph three: <p style="margin-top: 1.5em;"> Which works a treat. It does feel slightly odd to be putting a formatting command in a php file rather the stylesheet, but I suppose for a single instance it really is far more sensible.

Thanks very much: I'll check them both out.

Is there a site (or an offline program) where one can input a hex colour code and get the name of the colour? I can find many which can take the code and show the result, but I need names (even though they're obviously pretty subjective once you get beyond the main ones). Many thanks.

Thanks, I'll give that a go. Edited to add: Yes, it works beautifully. Thanks again.

Is it possible to space out a series of words across a line (using word-spacing) but to have one exception where two words are separated by only a single space? Ie: ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX ? I suppose it can be done with multiple nbsp tags but is there a more elegant way? Many thanks.

Ah, I wonder if that extra command was in the file originally and I inadvertently deleted it? In any case, I'll try the new coding this morning. Many thanks.

Thanks for the reply. So does that mean that those lines should be at the top of all.css files? What about the effect on paragraph formatting?

I mentioned in passing in another thread that for some reason <p></p> tags seemed not to be working in a simple HTML5/CSS website I was revamping offline. I've now found out why. I don't now now remember what the basis for the original files was, but for the redesign I was simply tinkering with them rather than starting fresh. I didn't notice (or didn't realise the significance of) one bit of code at the top of the style.css file: *{padding: 0px;margin: 0px;} This is labelled "Null Browser Defaults". When I experimentally removed those lines the paragraph formatting suddenly worked - presumably <p></p> uses padding and/or margins "behind the scenes" as it were. Unfortunately, the removal threw a lot of the other formatting out, so I'm going to have to rejig a good few things. But at least I have paragraphs. I've searched around but can't turn up exactly what Null Browser Defaults are and what those particular settings are for. Is the asterisk a sort of globally-affecting wild character?

That's clever and handy, thanks. I'm still feeling my way with all this stuff to a certain extent. I'll probably be asking some more fairly basic and/or naive questions soon and trying people's patience. But I'm grateful for the help and advice.

This isn't really progress, but I suddenly twigged that the code I was using for a.bluelink:link wasn't valid, largely because it consisted of seven digits and letters rather than six. Heaven only knows where I got it from or why I didn't notice sooner. Unfortunately, changing it to a recognised six letter code (actually, #0000FF) has done nothing to fix the problem. Edited to add: Solved it! After I corrected the codes I tried things out with one particular page - which turned out to be generated by the only page file where I'd forgotten to add "class="bluelink" into the relevant links. Now the colours are working fine throughout the site. Many thanks to dsonesuk for reassuring me that the basic approach was the right one. Those <p></p> tags are still misbehaving though. I'd keep investigating.

Yes, the new class links are directly below the overall settings in the CSS file. Many thanks for the suggestion about clearing the cache. I just tried it (I'm using Firefox) but unfortunately it's made no difference. The same thing is happening in Chrome. I was going to mention this in another thread, but perhaps it's relevant here: I've just discovered that <p> </p> tags are also not working: text just runs on with no line breaks. Something odd seems to be going on somewhere. As I said I'm working offline, using Notepad++ as an editor and EasyPHP as a viewer. But that shouldn't be making any difference, should it?

I've searched around for help on this problem but can't find anything that seems specifically relevant. In the small and straightforward HTML5/CSS site that I'm designing offline, I want to change the colour attributes of text links according to what background they appear on. In the CSS file I have this as an overall command: a:link {color:#CCCCFF; background-color:transparent; text-decoration:none} and so on, for visited, hover and active. This works perfectly and affects every link. I also have this, immediately following: a.bluelink:link {color:#8000080; background-color:transparent; text-decoration:none} and so on, which I intended to work in conjunction with specific links such as: <a class="bluelink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/sherlock/coules.shtml" target="_blank">BBC Cult interview</a> However, this doesn't produce any effect: the link remains in the overall-set colours. Am I overlooking something obvious, or do I simply have the wrong approach? Many thanks in advance.