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**lizzymace** · 22-Apr-2004, 05:57 PM

Hi Steve,

What program are you using to edit your templates? I had a similar problem recently when editing files in Dreamweaver. Whenever I ran a validation check it told me not to use ascii values above a certain number, so I went through the code and changed all the pound signs to:

& pound ; (please note, this should be without spaces between the "&" "pound" and ";", but if I write it like that, it gets parsed and comes out as an actual Ł sign, which is not very helpfulto you at all!)

instead of the number value. But then when I saved it, it would automatically change them all back again. When these files were uploaded the browser displayed them all as "?".

In the end I opened the files in notepad and found that it couldn't understand Dreamweaver's code either and also displayed them as question marks. So I had to go through and find the question marks which were supposed to be pound signs and change them manually.

I suggest you try opening your templates in notepad and changing each pound sign to:

& pound ; (without any spaces)

I hope it works for you!

Lizzy

**Tripwire** · 22-Apr-2004, 08:49 PM

Thanks Lizzy

Your post has pointed me in the right direction.
The templates are ok its the bit in Actinic that creates the dropdown menus which is at fault.
If we enter our component choice as:

Blue @ Ł5.99

It gets coded by Actinic as a Ł symbol in the html pages. Some browsers will display it as a Ł symbol most won't they like you say need to see the ASCII equivalant.

Solution = Don't put a Ł symbol use:

PHP Code:


&pound;

unless were missing something of course

**NormanRouxel** · 22-Apr-2004, 09:15 PM

It's something wierd. Lots of people use a Ł sign in the HTML for name field without any problems.

When I looked at your page source via View / Source in IE6. The page opens in Notepad and there is the Ł sign, even though that character displays as ?. There also seems to be some extra spaces in the HTML for these options.

Perhaps you could paste into the forum exactly what you've got in one of these fields.

Some thoughts.

Are you typing that info into the Choice name only (this makes a copy into the HTML for Name field)?

or

Are you typing that info into the HTML for Name field?

or

Are you importing that field?

Norman

**Tripwire** · 22-Apr-2004, 09:54 PM

It's something wierd. Lots of people use a Ł sign in the HTML for name field without any problems.

Can you show me some examples? I'd like to see others using Ł in their drop downs so I can look at their code and see if it shows up as expected.

Like I say some browsers will show the Ł as that others won't. I'm on IE 6.0.26 which shows is at a Ł
If I view it on Safari, IE and Firefox on a Mac the Ł symbol gets replaced by a ? or is not shown at all.
Macs are a pain but they usually do a good job of showing up non standard code. If you create a select element in Dreamweaver it will add the Ł symbol as & pound ; which is correct as this will display correctly in all browsers. People often complain about dreamweaver changing code but it usually does it for good reason.

There also seems to be some extra spaces in the HTML for these options

That shouldn't and doesn't make any difference.

In answer to your thoughts Norman:
I right click add new choice and enter in the text which like you say automatically makes a copy.

I've not noticed this problem before but thats because we have just upgraded all our network machines to the latest vesion of XP with IE6 and the problem has shown up. My home pc shows it as a Ł sign my bosses home pc shows it as a Ł sign. Come to think of it I've seen Ł signs replaced with ? on other ecommerce sites I bet their webmasters were blissfully unaware too

**NormanRouxel** · 22-Apr-2004, 11:22 PM

There also seems to be some extra spaces in the HTML for these options

I was just wondering if you had put any other characters in these fields that might have been affecting things. I guess not.

The really wierd thing is that on this system (XP-Pro IE6.0.2800 + all critical patches) your fields show as ?. However when I made a test product with Ł signs in the choice on the same system the Ł displayed OK.

So same system, same browser but it's only your pages that fail.

Now I'm wondering if there is something wrong in the <HEAD> section in that perhaps you've somehow defined a different character set than usual.

When I looked at your meta tags I see

<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

Now my Actinic is generating

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

which is the normal code in Act_Primary.html - so this may well be the problem.

Norman

PS Just patched that charset=iso-8859-1 into a save of your page source and it started working OK.

**Bottlehead** · 23-Apr-2004, 12:17 AM

I had a similar problem in January
The off line preview was fine but site html displayed the pound symbol as a question mark in some browsers. The main HTML was OK as it used the ISO numeric entity, but the search result and postage charge was affected. I edited all component text to use & # 163 ; to get round the problem, but it went away as I added more content to my site so I never got to the bottom.

Thread

**Tripwire** · 23-Apr-2004, 08:52 AM

Norman, the charset is ok in both the pages I've given as examples??

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

All I know now is if I put & pound ; instead of Ł it works ok in all browsers, so from now on I'm going to use that instead

If you could show me some other examples of people using the Ł symbol in drop downs we'd probably find the same problem with their sites in certain browsers

**Bottlehead** · 23-Apr-2004, 10:09 AM

Steve
My recommendation is to use an alternative to the Ł in Component html text, just in case.....

I removed the price display from view | search settings | Results, as this also generates html with the Ł symbol.

This leaves the price for shipping options in checkout.

Stephen

**DBurrows** · 23-Apr-2004, 11:30 AM

I am using the Ł symbol with no problems,
take a look at the code of my page and compair it with yours

http://www.xcopyproducts.co.uk/acata..._Software.html

**NormanRouxel** · 23-Apr-2004, 11:46 AM

Perhaps it's to do with the Compact HTML/CGI (in Design / Options / Miscellaneous). The misbehaving site is including all the extra comments and the working site isn't.

I have seen problems in the past with comments and JavaScript within <select> ... </select> blocks.

Norman

**Lisa Carey** · 08-Sep-2004, 02:08 PM

Still a problem?

Did anyone ever find the solution to this?

We have just changed servers and upgraded to v7. Now we have this problem - we didn't have it before.

It only occurs in the box where customers select shipping rate, in the shopping cart process. All the other Ł signs on the site are fine, it's just in the drop-down box where it comes out as ?. The source code shows Ł.

I've tried putting "& pound ;" in the shipping rate tables, but Actinic just changes it back to Ł.

The box text should read "UK RATE A (Ł5.06)" where UK RATE A is the name of my rate and Ł5.06 is the rate. I could possibly get round it by adding the Ł to the html bit with the brackets - but i just can't find the relevant html fragment anywhere.

Can anyone help?

**cdicken** · 08-Sep-2004, 03:47 PM

Hi Lisa

Could you try the Perl fix which James suggests in http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=9023 I strongly suspect you both are experiencing the same issue.

**Lisa Carey** · 09-Sep-2004, 10:18 AM

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Yo! Thanks Chris.

**Lisa Carey** · 10-Sep-2004, 02:12 PM

Have just discovered that ? is appearing in brochure fragments where Ł has been used in the text.
I've got round this by wrapping the text in !!< >!! and using & pound ; but this is a bit of drag - any ideas?

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