Question

I have several rendering problems with the default skin.

• Most (perhaps all) web page summaries consisting of a bulleted list of current-document links are overlaid with the picture: twiki\pub\TWiki\Pattern Skin\i_arrow_down.gif

Basically it is impossible to see the text without shading it. My best guess at this point is that it has something to do with TWikiTOC.css (???) being rendered properly--IE and Firefox behavior is identical.

---

Update: The problem with the table of contents being overlayed with down arrows is apparently due to the background image line in the html code that is being generated--removing this line and reloading results in proper appearance for the table of contents, however, at this point, I have no idea why it would be generated that way, and as of yet, where to change it for all pages that are generated.

style type="text/css" media="all"

/* Styles that are set using variables */

.twikiToc li {

background-image:url("/pub/TWiki/PatternSkin/bullet-down.gif");

}

---

• Also there are other things about the general appearance that doesn't look right, such as the left bar with links to everything not really being separated from the rest of the page, and that bar extending out to take up 50% of the browser window sometimes.

• The EditAttachPrint? links at the top look just like that: EditAttachPrint?, and not separated or right-justified.
• The page revision information also shows up directly after the Title instead of being right justified.
• The copyright text at the bottom of the page is also completely left justified and doesn't look right

(Edited to say: I posted this and then went to try and attach, and it won't work. I have problems both in IE and Firefox on a number of boards and with email, trying to attach files, both behind and not behind a corporate firewall--so no luck uploading the screenshot--either TWiki tells me it's a zero-byte file or the browser craps out)

Environment

-- JoshuaJohnston - 11 Feb 2006

Answer

Joshua, if you are new to TWiki you probably haven't upgraded but used a new install, right?

It looks like some style.css didn't come through. Could you check in the source the location for this file and open it in a new window to see if its there?

If it is there, what Firefox version are you using?

-- ArthurClemens - 11 Feb 2006

Arthur, sorry for the lack of info... I initially posted everything in OopsHangs and then started splitting up my questions into separate posts, so the first part of that posts details that I got a brand new install finally working of the September release and then ran the Upgrade script for v4.0.1, which seemed to break all kinds of things. So I have no data to worry about losing, nothing special like plugins installed, and just trying to get everything working.

I checked all explicitly declared .css and .js files to see if they existed at the designated locations--they were all fine.

In doing that I also found the issue with the down-arrow used as a repeating background over the table of contents--see update to post--but not the root cause of the problem.

So I'm still at a loss why most everything doesn't really look right.

-- JoshuaJohnston - 12 Feb 2006

Also, I am using the latest stable version of Firefox (1.5.x) and have also looked at everything in IE which looks identical.

-- JoshuaJohnston - 12 Feb 2006

Regarding the arrow bullets: looking at the css I see that there should be a background:no-repeat. Strange that we haven't seen this issue before.

Please write in css.pattern.tmpl:

.twikiToc li {
   background-image:url("%PUBURLPATH%/%TWIKIWEB%/PatternSkin/bullet-down.gif");
   background-repeat:no-repeat;
}

Correction: background-repeat:no-repeat; for twikiToc is defined in style.css.

have also looked at everything in IE which looks identical. - does this mean that the wrong rendering also occurs on your Explorer? Did you check a topic from TWiki 4.0 hosted here with your browsers? Does it look weird as well?

-- ArthurClemens - 12 Feb 2006

Alright I got a little confused with your post but I think I see what happened (you posted, then corrected yourself).

To answer your question, everything renders wrong in IE as well, but not for a topic such as your link (basically, something got messed up with my installation).

At the moment, I don't have file comparison tools installed (yet--such as Beyond Compare), but a quick look says that all did not go exactly right in copying some of the files from the distribution. I guess what I'm wondering is, how do I "reinstall"? I mean I have the directory straight out of the distrubution, but I'm not sure if I copy it that it will have the right things set up such as user (which would get changed I'm assuming from SYSTEM to my name) and then the RCS stuff too since I'm not familiar with it.

Is there an easy way to update files so they just match whatever was in the distrubtion package?

-- JoshuaJohnston - 13 Feb 2006

Alright, here's some more info to help narrow things down. I finally got Beyond Compare installed which shows style and layout .css files don't match. I also went through the upgrade log to see if these files were mentioned as "no common version"--they were.

My particular problem happened to be with the upgrade instructions after the script runs:

2.  Check the files listed above that have 'no common versions' - in
    those cases, your new install will still work, but you need to be
    aware the topic file that is in place is your _old_ one... no
    changes from the new release have been included. You will have to
    merge in the new version manually.

It said that and then I looked and there were hordes of files, almost all .gif files (165 .gif files), and I wasn't sure what the instructions meant, which I guess is where I need clarification: how to "merge in the new version manually". Is that just copying files or what?

So when I went back and looked at the upgrade log I replaced all ".gif (no common versions)" with ".gif (ncv)" and then looked at the remaining no common versions files: there were 4, among them style.css and layout.css.

So I know at this point I definitely need to merge the .css files "manually" and I'm wondering about the .gif files--if it really was a merge error or if it had something to do with being .gifs and that just messed it up (but that possibly they installed ok). I guess that will require some more checking against some of the error messages.

-- JoshuaJohnston - 13 Feb 2006

...and here are the 4 files that had "no common versions" error--actually only 3 non-graphic files, 1 of the 4 was a .png and the other 161 were .gif.

/twiki/pub/TWiki/PatternSkinCustomization/LowRes.css
/twiki/pub/TWiki/PatternSkin/layout.css
/twiki/pub/TWiki/PatternSkin/style.css

-- JoshuaJohnston - 13 Feb 2006

I decided to risk copying the above files so the old ones are overwritten with new ones from the distribution package... I did this in Cygwin which maintained SYSTEM ownership and did not change access priviliges for the files.

TWiki now renders correctly, I am only left wondering if there is anything that needs to be done with RCS, and I think I will have to update the many image files manually (!)

-- JoshuaJohnston - 13 Feb 2006

And one more thought... Beyond Compare did wonders in terms of comparing the distribution and the installation copies--the installation now matches for all files that the Upgrade Script pointed out as "no common versions" and it has made a world of difference in the appearance of the various pages.

-- JoshuaJohnston - 13 Feb 2006