Frontpage generated HTML pages won't show up properly in Firefox

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Frontpage generated HTML pages won't show up properly in Firefox

webmstr

4:53 pm on Mar 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

The pages show up as they should in Internet Explorer, but not in Firefox. Is this a known bug, or settings issue? TIA

tedster

5:16 pm on Mar 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

There's no one bug and no one easy answer. You'll find that generating cross-browser pages with FrontPage is a whole course of study - and which issues are coming up for any particular page needs a look at the code involved.

In general, Firefox is much more standards compliant than IE. But because IE is so widespread, and because Microsoft makes both FP and IE, therein lies the trouble.

If you want to see how far your particular FrontPage code falls short of being valid, check it out through the free online validators provided by the W3C, the standards body for the web.

W3C Validator - HTML [validator.w3.org]
W3C Validator - CSS [jigsaw.w3.org]

Wlauzon

5:28 pm on Mar 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

It depends on what version of FP also. FP2003 is much better than previous versions.

phantombookman

7:20 pm on Mar 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

Dreamweaver MX also produces code that Firefox cannot read!

Wlauzon

8:20 am on Mar 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

And it is not always an editor issue. Even Notepad can produce bad code :)

jdkuehne

7:33 pm on Mar 28, 2005 (gmt 0)

Frontpage by default sets a partial DOCTYPE such as

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

When I switched to a full DOCTYPE, including the link to the w3 DTD like this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

on one site that was causing problems, the trouble disappeared.

jdkuehne

Wlauzon

9:47 pm on Mar 28, 2005 (gmt 0)

Actually FP, or at least FP2003 does not set any default doc type until you declare it. The easiest way - if you use the same doc type all the time - is to edit the _blank page that all new pages start with.

How do I declare a default DOCTYPE in my new web pages?
In Microsoft FrontPage, there is a file on your computer that is used as the 'template' for the new_page_1.htm that's created either when you open your web or when you hit the "New Page" button. The file is called "Normal.htm".
In a normal install of FrontPage 2000 and 2002, this file is in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033\Pages\normal.tem\
In a normal install of FrontPage 2003, this file is in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033\PAGES11\normal.tem\
You can open this file in FrontPage and edit it like you would any other web page. Navigate to the directory where the file is located, open the file and choose File ¦ Properties. You can add things that you want to be common to all the new web pages you create from this point on in all your webs, like Meta tags and DOCTYPE.
Here's a DOCTYPE statement that you can copy and paste into the template, it goes before the <html> tag (in HTML View). The DOCTYPE statement must be at the very beginning of your page. To see what I mean, do a View ¦ Source on this page.
When you've added it, do a File ¦ Save As Normal.htm (Yes, you want to overwrite the file). From that point on, every new page you create will have a valid DOCTYPE declaration.