Firefox ignores stylesheets

(not a coding question)

[alt131]

Hi all, this is not a "how to link to a stylesheet" issue. Basically, on my stand-alone box no version of Firefox recognises a stylesheet for local files so the html is being displayed unstyled.

Firebug identifies "html.css", ua.css, and occasionally, forms.css. html.css seems to be created by writing linked sheets into the head as if they were embedded - but not applying them. On inspection the other sheets open with "mozilla.org" comments and are basically default displays for html elements - which is all the versions are rendering. (For those who care, the default border for forms is something vile like grooved.)

I got to this by having three working versions (0.9, 2, 3) and deciding to try to speed up FF3. That failed, so I tried setting up different profiles to at least run FF versions in parallel for testing. While that worked, all versions became unstable and randomly failed to apply existing sheets. I removed the additional profiles, ran each version one at a time using the pre-exisitng default, and all versions stopped recognising any styles bar the defaults described above.

Since then I've uninstalled all three versions, plus tracked down and removed the detritus from the hard drive and registry. There have been several restarts before I tried to set up again and have only installed:
a. 0.9
b 2 - portable (a failed thought that this might run in parrallel)
c. 3
d Firebug for 3 - but an older version in case the newer one was the problem.

All are running on their default settings. None will apply a style sheet to any local site (and firebug on ff3 confirms reading the defaults as described above). I've double-checked permissions, proxies, etc and all is as it should be - and exactly the set-up when they were stable.

Searching has only produced millions of explanantions of how to write a style link - which is not the problem. Presumably there is a setting that will direct ff to override the factory standard stylesheets - can anyone point me to it?

[tedster]

The MIME type for .css files may not be set correctly on the server. Check to make sure it is "text/css". Firefox is sensitive to this issue where other browsers usually are not.

[alt131]

Excellent spotting!

I'd adjusted the parse rules to bring this box inline with others at some stage - and presumably this saga. At least, reconfiguring the settings immediately resolved the problem.
Added value - this box was just marked for replacement - so no need to figure "why" today. Leaving me off researching ff sensitivites ;)

Many thanks tedster

[jdMorgan]

Mozilla-based browsers use the Content-Type server response header to determine the content-type. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, uses some sort of algorithm to decide what the content-type is, and ignores the Content-Type header unless it cannot figure out what the content type actually is.

This isn't so much a "Firefox sensitivity" as it is a matter of Mozilla adhering to Web standards.

I'm not actually sure about Opera, Safari, or Chrome. So I'll suggest those for your 'future research' :)

Jim

[alt131]

This isn't so much a "Firefox sensitivity" as it is a matter of Mozilla adhering to Web standards.

Yup, could have been better framed. Never identified with [insert today's fashionable bashing candidate] so didn't see the potential for the phrase. But, pointy finger ---> tedster started it! ;)

In terms of the impact I saw, Chrome, winSafari, later versions of Opera and ie6+7 were fine. I never fired up Moz, Netscape or older versions of anything either - which for interest sake I now regret.

However in terms of practicalities, keep in mind I instituted the same set-up as works elsewhere, including public servers. I really did think it might be install/uninstall related, but once tedster eradicated that possibility, I'm now thinking box-specific.

But all good pointers to material I need to brush up on - and a reminder to lurk in the Apache forum more often as well!

Thanks again