CSS in Contribute

[Flambo]

I was wondering if someone could help with using CSS styles in contribute.
Apologise now for my lack of knowledge - but my website has been developed
using CSS and wish to use contribute to update my pages. I have read that you
can select CSS styles when editing using the style menu, but I am experiencing
problems in that it only seems to display styles that I believe are already in
use on the page and not what is available in my style.css file. I don?t want to
break the way the page is coded. Is there anyway around this?

[Tom Benjamin]

Contribute should pick up all the CSS styles linked to your pages. Are you sure
the syntax for the link to the stylesheet file is correct. The only quirk I've
found is that to apply a style to an image you can only do it via Format >
Style.

[Flambo]

I have noticed that particular styles appear if they are already in use on the
page but not if they are not, so I am assuming the links and funtionality is
working correctly. This is a problem though, because I need them all available
to choose from to keep the coding correct i.e. in css and not tables? Thanks.

[Tom Benjamin]

Sounds to me as if your pages are not using a single linked stylesheet, but have styles defined on each page. Can you send a link to your site?

[Flambo]

[url]www.thingstodonearyou.co.uk[/url].

Thanks.

[Tom Benjamin]

Well, your style sheets are linked so there's no issue there. If you take a
look at [url]http://www.thingstodonearyou.co.uk/css/styles.css[/url] almost all the styles
in there apply to regular HTML elements (e.g. h2, img, p, a) inside particular
containers (e.g. .listingdetails h2, .listingdetails p, so you don't have to
apply them - they just automatically format the appropriate tags. If you look
at the source code of some of your pages you'll see things like <div
class="categorylist"> and inside that div container are h2, p etc - which
automatically pick up the styles defined in the CSS file for .categorylist h2,
..categorylist p etc. Towards the end of the style sheet there is a section of
"Text styles" that you should be able to apply to selected pieces of text.

Does that help? The problem you're having might be that you can't create new
<div> containers with Contribute.

[Flambo]

Thank you for taking a look. I believe it maybe selecting the specific styles
under ?Text Styles? is where I am going wrong. How do you do this? I expected
to see them under the styles option in contribute, but they are not?

[Tom Benjamin]

I think you can select a piece of text on the page and then apply a CSS style
to it using the drop-down menu just below the Publish button. Or you can use
the Format > Style menu command. You will only be able to apply the CSS styles
if your Contribute site administrator has given your role that ability.

[Flambo]

Isn't this exactly the problem though? I have full read write access to my
website, the styles drop down box under the publish button and in the
Format>style does not show any of the styles in the 'Text Styles' configured in
my styles.css file? I just can't see anyway to add them, view them and use them?

It Just shows:

Normal
Heading1
Heading 2
Heading 3
Heading 4
Heading 5
Heading 6

Where as my 'Text Style' shows:

toptitle
sectiontitle
sectiontitle
sectiontitle a:hover
sectiontitlebold
formlabel
formlabelsmall
menuitem
menuitem
menuitem a:hover
menuitembold
menuitembold a
menuitembold a:hover
tinytext
tinytext a
tinytext a:hover
bodytext
bodyemphasis
categorytext a
category a:hover

[Tom Benjamin]

Are you able to administer the site? I suspect the administrator has not checked the option to "Include CSS styles in the Style menu" - see the role settings "Styles and Fonts" entry.

[Flambo]

Excellent!!!!

That cured it. Thanks very much. Looked more like it was more to do with not
being setup as an administrator.

But...... There is one small problem, in that it works for all pages that sit
off the root of [url]http://www.thingstodonearyou.co.uk[/url], but if you try to edit
[url]http://www.thingstodonearyou.co.uk/admin/help.asp[/url] the styles disappear? You can
get to this by clicking, 'Advertiser' on the first page, then 'Help and
Support'.

The 'admin' directory has a different style.css to the root. I have tried
manually selecting this in the role settings but made no difference?

[Tom Benjamin]

Glad we got there!

On your help.asp page edit the link to the stylesheet, it needs to account for "admin" being a sub-directory: <link href="../css/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

[Flambo]

I changed this from:

<link href="css/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

to

<link href="../css/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

But this made no difference?

[Tom Benjamin]

Well that has fixed the link to the CSS file, and I can see that you've been able to apply styles like menuitembold, menuitme, sectiontitle, bodytext etc. What is it that you're not able to do?

[Flambo]

I actually built the page from code in the end because I could not get
Contribute to see the styles. You may wonder therefore why I need Contribute -
well the main reason is I am new to HTML and that particular page took me ages
to do, it would just be easier.

So the problem stands that I can now read styles by editing pages off the root
directory but not from any where else, like the help file.

[Flambo]

Just to let you know I have tried every combination of <link
href="/css/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> i can think of
like:

<link href="../css/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="admin/css/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="..admin//css/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

have even tried:

<style type="text/css">
<!--
@import url("css/styles.css");
-->
</style>

The later of which is used on the home page or root directory that we know
works. I therefore decided to use this for the help.asp file and I now notice
the styles.css file being loaded when you hit the 'Edit' button in contribute.
Unfortuanlty though the styles do not still show?

I think we are nearly there, do you have anymore suggestions?

Thanks.