I have launched a site that I build using CoffeeCup HTML editor 2008.
On my computer, it views fine, in several different browsers, no problem, and on several other computers I have tried, both macs and windows.

However, someone just sent me an email saying that in several of the pages, random question marks appear throughout the text. I looked in the coding, and could not see any reason that this might be happening... no strange tags where they reported question marks, nada.

Any clue as to what might be causing this? Is it a setting on their browser?
The site is at http://southpacificfamily.org

-MK

Hi,

You could perhaps send a mail back and ask which OS and browser the person is using.

I see no random question marks (Vista Sp1, FF2).

But I see that the site was originally built in the 2007 version of the HTML Editor. It has the doctype 4.0.

You could start up your 2008 version and copy over the doc type declatation and the meta tag determining the charset, and then run code cleaner. Then ask your friend to look at it again.

Inger's advice is good. I would also look at a copy/paste issue. Sometimes when text is copied from a text document, web page, pdf file or other source and then pasted onto a web page designed in a different editor, the encoding can get messed up. You may need to look at your source code, and manually change any characters like " , ; : ' . so that they are written to the page rather than pasted from a different file with a different doctype.

I opened up the pages with Coffeecup 2008, ran code cleaner, and uploaded the pages again.
How do I copy over the doc type declaration and meta tag? copy it from where?
I assume these would be different if I made a new page with HTML editor 2008, so should I do that, and then copy that stuff from the new page?
I haven't asked my friend to look again yet, will soon.

You can find some info on doctypes here:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/doctype.html

Your meta tags are empty on your page, so copying them won't change anything. Here is an example from your page:
<title>SouthPacificFamily</title>
<meta name="generator" content="CoffeeCup HTML Editor 2007 - www.coffeecup.com">
<meta name="description" content="">
<meta name="keywords" content="">

the meta "generator" just tells the browser what program you used to make the page. The "description" content="" section, you could put a short description of your web page insid the quotation marks, and the "keywords" are exactly that. A fishing site could have keywords like "sports, fishing, water, boat... or other words that someone might use in a web search to help them find your site.

These sections can be found in the code of your site.

Ok, thanks.

I like your dog, BTW.

Tiny says "thank you". Your dog looks like a big one, but I get he/she is gentle. Mine is quite a character. Smartest dog I ever owned, but has the "let me do as I please" attitude of a cat. It's the only dog I've ever had that will refuse to go for a walk because the dog decides that it wants to play ball in the back yard instead. I can walk out the front door with her leash in my hand, and she will just let me go for my walk all by myself. (not all the time).

yeah, Maddy looks fierce, but she's really just a big teddy bear inside