This topic will help you solve some common problems encountered when formatting reports with external cascading style sheets (CSS).
Which problems have you needed to troubleshoot? If you have troubleshooting suggestions that you think others will find helpful, we invite you to send them to us so that we can consider including them in a future release.
Symptom: The report does not reflect recent changes to the cascading style sheet.
Solution: Click your browser Refresh button (Microsoft Internet Explorer) to reload the CSS file from the web server. This ensures that your web browser will use the most current version of the cascading style sheet to format the report.
Symptom: The report is not using any of the cascading style sheet formatting.
Solution 1: Check the URL that specifies the link (in the CSSURL attribute or in the SET CSSURL command, or if the report procedure uses -HTMLFORM, in the LINK element) and correct it, if necessary.
Solution 2: All versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer that are certified for use with WebFOCUS support cascading style sheets. Check to be sure that your browser is certified. If it is not, install an appropriate version of Internet Explorer or Communicator.
Solution 3: Reset your browser to accept a document cascading style sheet. For instructions about checking or changing a browser setting, see the browser Help.
Solution 4: Remove the unsupported property, or upgrade your browser to a version that supports the property.
Solution 5: Specify the report formatting in a rule for a different element (for example, if the browser does not correctly implement inheritance from BODY, use a rule for TD), or else upgrade your browser to a version that correctly supports inheritance.
Solution 6: Make sure the directory with the CSS file is on the server search path.
Symptom: The report reflects some, but not all, of the CSS formatting.
Solution 1: Upgrade your browser to a version that supports all the CSS features used to format the report, or edit the cascading style sheet to remove features that are unsupported by some of the browsers that will be used to display the report.
Solution 2: Reset your browser to accept the cascading style sheet for each document, or edit the rules in the two cascading style sheets so that they no longer conflict.
Solution 3: Remove the unsupported property, or upgrade your browser to a version that supports the property.
If a class has not yet been assigned to a report cell, and you specify conditional formatting for it, only the first class whose condition is satisfied by that row is assigned to the cell. The others are ignored.
Solution 4: Do not assign more than one CSS class to each report component. If you need to apply multiple attributes, bundle them into a single class.
Solution 5: Specify the report formatting in a rule for a different element (for example, if the browser does not correctly implement inheritance from BODY, use a rule for TD), or else upgrade your browser to a version that correctly supports inheritance.
Solution 6: The solution depends on the kind of formatting conflict. In the example above, the solution is to generate an internal cascading style sheet. For a complete description of which formatting methods are compatible with an external CSS, and how to avoid formatting conflicts, see Combining an External CSS With Other Formatting Methods.
Symptom: A report distributed with ReportCaster does not have the CSS styling, but it does have CSS styling when run interactively.
Solution: Issue the WebFOCUS command SET HTMLCSS=ON in your procedure, or issue the command ON TABLE SET HTMLCSS ON in your request. This creates reports with an inline CSS.