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Page display issues
Question
My site is not displaying correctly. In one or more browsers, elements are not centred or aligned as they should be, or are the wrong size or are not in the position I want them to be. Can you help me fix my page display?
Answer
Display bugs or issues, especially where pages render quite differently depending on which browser you are using, are almost always caused by HTML bugs. We have taken care to ensure that CactuShop outputs valid HTML and that our default skins are free of HTML bugs. Consequently HTML bugs are almost certainly in your skin design or HTML that you have inserted into data within the site.
So the first step to deal with such problems is to ensure that your site is free of HTML bugs; if it contains bugs then it is to be expected that browsers might struggle to display it consistently and in the way you intended.
The Worldwide Web Consortium ("W3C") provides the definitive validation tool which you can use to easily verify any page on the web:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http://www.cactushop.com/cs6/
As you can see from the above link, the home page of CactuShop v6 using our default skin validates without errors. You can test your own site by passing your own URL to the W3C validator.
If you install the Webdev toolbar in Firefox (there are similar tools on other browsers) you can also validate local pages that are not live on the web.
You should work through any errors picked up by the validator to ensure the pages of your site validate. Chances are, once they validate successfully the site will display consistently on all browsers.
However, IE6 and 7 are not properly standards-compliant, and you may still find some issues with these even after your site validates without errors. In such cases, the only solution is to Google and find other users with similar problems. Most IE display issues are widely known and documented, with workarounds available to rectify the problems without breaking the correct display on other browsers.
As with other customizations, we cannot fix customers' HTML or CSS bugs under support. The CactuShop code and our skins validate successfully at the W3C and as such are 'bug-free'. If you are unable to fix HTML bugs after using the tools indicated in this article, we can provide a quote for addressing display issues that you are unable to fix if required. Alternatively you may find that any web designer with knowledge of standards-compliant HTML will be able to assist as these technologies are not unique to CactuShop, they are web standards.