So, I decided I could splice together a webpage using Photoshop, ImageReady, a script I found off the web, and a flash/xml gallery I found as well...without any real knowledge of webpage architecture. I've created a monster.

Well, all of the elements I've incorporated display, but they do so differently in different browsers. In IE, I'm getting an extra white line across the bottom of my table which doesn't happen in Firefox. Firefox DOES, however, have a problem with my flash gallery, displaying it as spanning one row instead of the specified four and throwing off the rest of my table. I haven't tried it in another browser yet, but I can imagine there's another surprise waiting when I do.

The site is: http://www.cercajewelry.com/neck.html

Trying to figure out what's happening to cause these two things, I ran across a few sites that talked about "website validation". I decided to try that, and failed with flying colors. The first thing the validation site caught was that I didn't specify a doctype up top. Browsing through the related links, I'm not even sure what to specify. The site I used evaluated my page assuming HTML 4.01 Transitional, though specifying and fixing some of the problems listed didn't fix the flash/table issue or the white bar issue, and created a couple of its own. I tried specifying XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and Firefox HATED that...not only did the flash not span correctly, but the entire table was thrown out of whack. I'm not sure I understand the difference between the two...reading, it sounds as though XHTML is a more strict version of HTML...is there some other difference?

Any help/guidance/exorcist you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Trying to complete this project in the manner I have has whacked me upside the head with just how little I know.

It depends on what (X)HTML version you're using. In your case the existing coding suggests HTML4/transitional, in which case this one can be used:


but you should also aim to get a doctype that puts browsers in "standards" mode, that's the best way to make sure as many browsers as possible render a page in a similar way. Because of that this one is better:


but then you must replace some "presentational" HTML elements and attributes with CSS.

See also http://htmlhelp.com/faq/html/all.html#doctype


Sounds like the validator here: http://www.htmlhelp.com/cgi-bin/validate.c...y.com/neck.html

The first errors are about proprietary HTML attributes for the BODY element, these can be replaced with CSS. The next one is about the CENTER element outside BODY, where it's not permitted. The last one is because FONT is not allowed inside PRE, again you can replace it with CSS.

But your problems are more likely due to the CSS, not HTML (but you should fix the HTML errors anyway, since CSS depends on that).


The important distinction is between "standards mode" (also known as "strict" mode) HTML/XHTML, and "quirks mode" HTML/XHTML. Otherwise only validators care about the difference between HTML and XHTML, browsers ignore it, so you might as well use HTML4.01 strict/std mode . See also http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/

BTW your Flash version detection script fails in my IE6, since I have ActiveX disabled. Also the Flash popups were slightly confusing even in browsers where they do work.

The link images should have real ALT text.

The text is pretty hard to read too due to its small size.