Well, I found out my HTML4.01 strict & CSS problem at littleghost.com is not me.

I finally got to the point of understanding the problem — the MIME type for CSS was not properly set. This only creates issues when one uses the strict doctype and attempts to import/link a CSS file. Odd.

And to make it worse, it’s only an issue (display issue) for Netscape. Works fine in IE — but the style sheet does fail the W3C validator, so that’s no good. Should pass (when the same CSS is parked somewhere else [different domain] and called from page on littleghost.com, all is well).

I wrote to Concentric, and they assured me that the type was set. It appears they were just looking at the pages displaying in a browers, and I’m all but certain that the browser was IE (why wouldn’t it be?).

So I set up some example pages for them to look at, and they finally got it. It has something to do with the configuration on my domain. They tested a test html/css file set they had; worked fine and validated at W3C in some other location. They move it into my domain, and they begin to see what I saw.

They are escalating the issue.

While it’s good they finally got it, what if I was a newbie? There first response was “yes it works; the mime type is set”.

How would I have been able to tell them they were wrong? I would have spent weeks coding/tweaking to make it work…and never understanding why it didn’t.

I’m actually pretty good at this stuff, but I had to prove to myself (so I could prove to them) that it was them, not me before they’d try to address the issue. If I didn’t have this Linux box here (so I could kill/add MIME types) I might have been screwed, even knowing what I do.

I felt I needed to do this so I could tell them (as I did) that I have this working in three different environments, two NT and one Linux — but same code fails at Concentric. And what if I didn’t have another domain to park the style sheet on so I could show them that a call to Concentric results in failure, call — from same code — to get the CSS from another domain was successful.

That’s one of the reasons I like to have two domains, but it’s always nice when they are configured correctly. I’m just learning this administration stuff myself, so I use the actual domain hosts I have as examples of what should be done. So I can see if what I’ve done here will work in the “real world.”

Ah well, we’ll see if they get back to me on this one. I’ve been at Concentric (ok, “XO”) for five years now, and don’t really want to move the domain unless I have to. Just too much of a hassle.