jlhaslip

yes, only Apache servers use .htaccess.

I think that you are seeing an hypertext reference to the directory and not a file.When the http://domain.com ends without the file extension as per your example, you are taken to the directory and the 'index' file for that directory is activated according to the host's default list of file names. Some use index.html, or index.htm, or sometimes 'home.html, etc. The default filename for the account root can be altered using htaccess on an Apache server.

jlhaslip: so if IE doesn't recognize the margin 0, why is firefox bumping the center section of my header further town from the top?

It is the 'auto' part which ie has trouble with. That is what performs the centering. It 'automagically' finds the correct value for the margins for the block of info to be centred.And I don't have FF or IE until Monday (laptop is on its way back from being repaired), so I can't check the 'bumping down' until then, but check that both the top margins and the top padding are declared. Sometimes the browser uses one or the other to space things by default. IE might be using margins and FF might be using padding, or vice versa, so declare both of them in your css and they should produce the same results. Maybe.*edit* added this part as an after thought.Change this:

#banner {margin-left:auto;	margin-right:auto;	text-align:center}

to this:

#banner {margin: 0 auto;	padding: 0;	text-align:center}

to see if it works the same in both. And then alter the padding to drop the banner down to where you want it to rest.

In your stylesheet, declare display:none to fix the marquee tag...

I assure you that as you progress in developing sites, the css actually gets easier. And the benefits far exceed the efforts, IMHO. Less bandwidth on the server and web, easier code to change (or fix), and less 'spaghetti' code than tables.

Accessibility issues appear when you stop people from being able to alter the text to suit themselves. Some elderly or vision impaired users won't like it. In some countries, it violates their rights and is mandated by laws that web-sites must be accessible. I am not totally familiar with them, but I think in the USA, certain sites which deal with the Government, for example, must be built to allow for accessibility or there are repercussions on the company's status with respect to being awarded Government contracts and such.In the meantime, have you tried declaring the css as "!important"? That affects the cascade and changes the priority of the attributes declared !important. I believe the author's sheet can overrule the user's sheet if so declared, but confirm it at the w3c site if you want to, or simply give it a whirl to see if that works.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#edef-INPUThttp://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_input.aspOOPS!

Opera is notorious for adapting its parsing. What worked to the specs in version 7.51 doesn't work in version 7.52, but mysteriously works again in version 9.0, so keep this in mind as you develop for Opera. They do have some terribly talented coders on their support site, though. It is a great Browser that just gets better as time goes on. I still prefer FF mostly for the Web Developer's Extension, though. If Opera had that, I think i would use it more often.Furthermore, it passes the ACID2 test, most others don't even come close.http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/#content-main

Glad to have been of some assistance. Hope you learned something, too. Keep plugging away, it'll all be good soon. Well, actually, a web site is a living thing which needs to be fed and maintained, but it gets easier with time... Good Luck on it.Oh, and IE doesn't recognize the margin: 0 auto, so that's why the CSS includes the text-align:center.:)Just another work-around for IE.

The book linked in the post above mine is the better of the ones posted, IMHO. Larry Ullman writes in an incredibly easy to understand fashion and makes it easy to have a full featured site up and running in no time flat.The others are good, too, but I'll stick with Ullman, thanks. He supports a php/mysql website forum which is quite helpful and active for assisting with your problems, too, so I highly reccomend that book for the simple fact that he TEACHES you, not just cashes his royalty cheques.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /><link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/ico" />

Use one (or both) of these in your head tags and name the image as "favicon.ico".Google to find a site on the web which will create the favicon as it is a special format or something. There are a few sites which will build the icon if you upload the image to them. http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/http://www.favicongenerator.com/

The hr tag is deprecated, so the more compliant Browsers do not handle them well, as stated above. When something works in IE, but not the other Browsers, look to the CSS Specs for the answer. IE is terrible at meeting the specifications.http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/graphics.html#edef-HR

The answer about javascript is to arrange the menu so that it normally displays and use javascript to HIDE the submenus. If javascript is disabled, the full menu is then displayed.As to the need for javascript, I believe there are methods for having css-powered multi-level drop-downs. Start by looking at the cssplay.co.uk site.http://cssplay.co.uk/ie/ie7bug.html ==> check this page, for example. 6 levels of drop-down, all css.

*edit*Hope you get it so it works for you.

Start with closing your input tags.

A css-only drop-down menu from cssplay.co.uk

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title> Stu Nicholls | CSSplay | Validating drop down cross-browser menu</title><meta name="Author" content="Stu Nicholls" /><style type="text/css">/* ================================================================ This copyright notice must be untouched at all times.The original version of this stylesheet and the associated (x)htmlis available at [url="http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/basic_dd.html"]http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/basic_dd.html[/url]Copyright © 2005-2007 Stu Nicholls. All rights reserved.This stylesheet and the assocaited (x)html may be modified in any way to fit your requirements.=================================================================== *//* remove the bullets, padding and margins from the lists */.menu ul{list-style-type:none;padding:0;margin:0;}/* make the top level links horizontal and position relative so that we can position the sub level */.menu li{float:left;position:relative;z-index:100;}/* use the table to position the dropdown list */.menu table{position:absolute;border-collapse:collapse;z-index:80;left:-1px;top:25px;}/* style all the links */.menu a, .menu :visited {display:block;font-size:10px;width:149px;padding:7px 0;color:#000;background:#949e7c;text-decoration:none;margin-right:1px;text-align:center;}/* style the links hover */.menu :hover{color:#444;background:#d4d8bd;}/* hide the sub level links */.menu ul ul {visibility:hidden;position:absolute;width:149px;height:0;}/* make the sub level visible on hover list or link */.menu ul li:hover ul,.menu ul a:hover ul{visibility:visible;}</style></head><body >	<h2>The basic cross-browser drop-down validating menu</h2><h3>as per cssplay.co.uk</h3><h3>Updated 30th July 2006</h3><div class="menu"><ul><li><a href="../menu/index.html">DEMOS<!--[if IE 7]><!--></a><!--<![endif]--><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]-->	<ul>	<li><a href="../menu/zero_dollars.html" title="The zero dollar ads page">zero dollars</a></li>	<li><a href="../menu/embed.html" title="Wrapping text around images">wrapping text</a></li>	<li><a href="../menu/form.html" title="Styling forms">styled form</a></li>	<li><a href="../menu/nodots.html" title="Removing active/focus borders">active focus</a></li>	<li><a href="../menu/shadow_boxing.html" title="Multi-position drop shadow">shadow boxing</a></li>	<li><a href="../menu/old_master.html" title="Image Map for detailed information">image map</a></li>	<li><a href="../menu/bodies.html" title="fun with background images">fun backgrounds</a></li>	<li><a href="../menu/fade_scroll.html" title="fade-out scrolling">fade scrolling</a></li>	<li><a href="../menu/em_images.html" title="em size images compared">em sized images</a></li>	</ul><!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li><li><a href="index.html">MENUS<!--[if IE 7]><!--></a><!--<![endif]--><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]-->	<ul>	<li><a href="spies.html" title="a coded list of spies">spies menu</a></li>	<li><a href="vertical.html" title="a horizontal vertical menu">vertical menu</a></li>	<li><a href="expand.html" title="an enlarging unordered list">enlarging list</a></li>	<li><a href="enlarge.html" title="an unordered list with link images">link images</a></li>	<li><a href="cross.html" title="non-rectangular links">non-rectangular</a></li>	<li><a href="jigsaw.html" title="jigsaw links">jigsaw links</a></li>	<li><a href="circles.html" title="circular links">circular links</a></li>	</ul><!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li><li><a href="../layouts/index.html">LAYOUTS<!--[if IE 7]><!--></a><!--<![endif]--><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]-->	<ul>	<li><a href="../layouts/bodyfix.html" title="Cross browser fixed layout">Fixed 1</a></li>	<li><a href="../layouts/body2.html" title="Cross browser fixed layout">Fixed 2</a></li>	<li><a href="../layouts/body4.html" title="Cross browser fixed layout">Fixed 3</a></li>	<li><a href="../layouts/body5.html" title="Cross browser fixed layout">Fixed 4</a></li>	<li><a href="../layouts/minimum.html" title="A simple minimum width layout">minimum width</a></li>	</ul><!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li><li><a href="../boxes/index.html">BOXES<!--[if IE 7]><!--></a><!--<![endif]--><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]-->	<ul>	<li><a href="spies.html" title="a coded list of spies">spies menu</a></li>	<li><a href="vertical.html" title="a horizontal vertical menu">vertical menu</a></li>	<li><a href="expand.html" title="an enlarging unordered list">enlarging list</a></li>	<li><a href="enlarge.html" title="an unordered list with link images">link images</a></li>	<li><a href="cross.html" title="non-rectangular links">non-rectangular</a></li>	<li><a href="jigsaw.html" title="jigsaw links">jigsaw links</a></li>	<li><a href="circles.html" title="circular links">circular links</a></li>	</ul><!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li><li><a  href="../mozilla/index.html">MOZILLA<!--[if IE 7]><!--></a><!--<![endif]--><!--[if lte IE 6]><table><tr><td><![endif]-->	<ul>	<li><a href="../mozilla/dropdown.html" title="A drop down menu">drop down menu</a></li>	<li><a href="../mozilla/cascade.html" title="A cascading menu">cascading menu</a></li>	<li><a href="../mozilla/content.html" title="Using content:">content:</a></li>	<li><a href="../mozilla/moxbox.html" title=":hover applied to a div">mozzie box</a></li>	<li><a href="../mozilla/rainbow.html" title="I can build a rainbow">rainbow box</a></li>	<li><a href="../mozilla/snooker.html" title="Snooker cue">snooker cue</a></li>	<li><a href="../mozilla/target.html" title="Target Practise">target practise</a></li>	<li><a href="../mozilla/splittext.html" title="Two tone headings">two tone headings</a></li>	<li><a href="../mozilla/shadow_text.html" title="Shadow text">shadow text</a></li>	</ul><!--[if lte IE 6]></td></tr></table></a><![endif]--></li></ul></div></body></html>

I have a coupon for an update, but like many others, I would just as soon wait til the bugs starts showing up to decide whether it is worth it or not. Only trouble is the rebate coupon expires in April

or set the margin-right to 50% might work. Let's see some code...

Google on Irfanview. I think they have a freeware thumbnail creator.

Here is a valuable link to the w3c approved DTD's.http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.htmlIf you use the reccomended Template, drop the first xml line because it causes problems in (you guessed it) IE.

<span style="float:left;filter:alpha(opacity=25);-moz-opacity:.25;opacity:.25;"><img src="http://www.mandarindesign.com/images/v90.gif" width="50" height="50"></span>	#lightbox	{		display:none;		background: #000000;		opacity: .5;		filter: alpha(opacity=50);		position: absolute;		top: 0;		left: 0;	}

Here is a sample of some css opacity code which does work. Followed by your opacity code.Is it possible that the entire ID'd element does not accept the opacity attribute? Maybe post your (x)html code to see if you are trying to add opacity to an element which may not be acceptable to the opacity attribute? For example, you can add opacity to pictures, but perhaps not paragraphs??? Only thing I can think of...*EDIT*A check of the index of the w3c css 2 specs finds zero results for "opacity", "filter", or "alpha", so where are they hiding the information on Opacity?*EDIT 2 *Further research shows that the "opacity" property is not officially included in the CSS Specs until CSS3 under the guise of the SVG implementation, so the validation of the CSS must be using guidelines from prior to the SVG standards.Check the link below. That doesn't mean the Browsers do not implement the property, but the CSS Validator would be programmed to not allow it before the CSS3 standards??? I don't know any more than this. Maybe someone else has another take on it...http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-color/#profiles

Use the period (dot) in the css file, and the "class =" in the (x)html.*edit to fix typo*

Well not only are they ragging on br, but their code isn't compliant. All tags need to be closed.

Xhtml only. The html spec does not require closing tags a lot of times. Good programming would expect the tags to be closed even though they are not 'required'.

Looks to me like you are using "LISTS" of links, so why not use <ul> and <li> tags???That would be semanticaly(sp) correct, and it is easy enough to develop consistent results in various Browsers.

Couple of notes:1.) Windows used a three character extension for many years in order to maintain backwards compatibility with the older DOS systems, so an .htm file extension is a throw-back to the win9x systems (and earlier).2.) the filename of the "index.html" and its extension can be modified using .htaccess and apache directives on the server, if your system allows you those capabilities.