[WEB4LIB] weird "submit" button display

[Thomas Dowling]

>
> I looked in the archives and couldn't find anything like what I'm
> experiencing. I have one PC that displays what looks like a symbolic
font
> (boxes,backslashes,etc) on all of the "gray" submit buttons through my
web
> catalog. It only happens in IE and as far as I can tell, only on the one
> PC.  I have seen the display on other web pages besides our web catalog
but
> not all submit buttons display this way. I have tried everything I can
> think of including upgrading IE to 5.5 SP1. Anyone have any ideas? I'm
> stumped!
>


Here's the culprit:

=========
INPUT {font-family: serif; font-weight: bold; font-size: 12pt;}
=========

IE 5+ has a problem that affects more than a few installations when it
comes to dealing with the CSS generic font families (serif, sans-serif,
monospace, cursive, fantasy).  I have never seen a good explanation, nor a
bug fix.

Some, but not all, installations of IE will select, um, questionable
choices for these families.  I've seen a lot of reports of the browser
defaulting to Symbol for one or more of them.

I can't offer a fix from the browser end.  At the server, change the style
property to include a real font name that's likely to be installed, so for
example:

INPUT {font-family: Utopia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif;}


By the way, there are a number of reasons why specifying point sizes for
onscreen display can be a bad idea.  It's usually better to leave the font
size alone or to use percentages (but not lower than about 85% IMO).

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu