HTML/XHTML:Troubleshooting

Overview
What are some of the gotchas that students experience while developing web pages in HTML. This page may provide clues if things are not working as they should.

Common spelling errors
image: src (commonly typed as scr)

Check path information correct
Look for
 * Look at the actual source code (right click on the page > View source - IE)
 * Right click on the link and look at the links properties (in IE) to see what the actual link is.
 * The file actually does exist (and is spelt correctly)
 * absolute path file://C:/...
 * lots of ../../../ which often indicates it's looking for a file in a folder above the page.
 * The path is correct

Checking for broken links
The following techniques can be used to check your web site for broken links
 * 1) Copy your web site to a computer not connected to the EIT Intranet (e.g. home PC)
 * 2) Use Windows explorer search to look for files containing file://
 * 3) Use Windows explorer search to look for files containing the drive letters you have used to develop your web site eg. C:, H:
 * 4) Rename the folder containing the web site and test
 * 5) Make sure your files are lowercase as case is significant when copying to a Unix based server (i.e. Michael.htm, MICHAEL.HTM, Michael.htm, etc. are all different)
 * 6) Check that all files referenced by your web site are included in the main folder or sub-folders in the main folder. You can do this by copying the web folder to another computer and testing. Simply copying a web site to a memory stick and running from there will not show absolute links, unless you run it on a completely different computer - not attached to any shared drives.

Style sheets

 * Problem: Web site works fine in IE on Local drive but fails on Network drive/web drive. Works fine in other browsers (e.g. Safari)
 * Possible cause: An extra quote, for example:


 * Solution: remove quote!! (Duh!!)