Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

26 Jun 2008, 6:48 PM

#1

New Zenner

Join Date:: May 2008
Posts:: 27
Plugin Contributions:: 0

Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

I have these symbols showing at the top of my page in the Firefox browser.
ï»¿
They do not show up in Internet Explorer-
:no: Please help me!! It is driving me crazy! Thanks to all in advance!!
Here's my code:
ï»¿<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en"> <head> <title>Zen Cart!, The Art of E-commerce</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <meta name="keywords" content="Hardware Software DVD Movies Gift Certificates Big Linked Test Examples Free Call Stuff Test 10% by Attrib Test 10% A Top Level Cat Sale Percentage Sale Deduction Sale New Price Big Unlinked New v1.2 Music Documents Mixed Product Types ecommerce, open source, shop, online shopping " /> <meta name="description" content="Zen Cart! : - Hardware Software DVD Movies Gift Certificates Big Linked Test Examples Free Call Stuff Test 10% by Attrib Test 10% A Top Level Cat Sale Percentage Sale Deduction Sale New Price Big Unlinked New v1.2 Music Documents Mixed Product Types ecommerce, open source, shop, online shopping" /> <meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no" /> <meta name="author" content="The Zen Cart™ Team and others" /> <meta name="generator" content="shopping cart program by Zen Cart™, <http://www.zen-cart.com> eCommerce" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="includes/templates/classic/css/stylesheet.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="includes/templates/classic/css/stylesheet_css_buttons.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="includes/templates/classic/css/print_stylesheet.css" /> </head> <body id="indexHomeBody"> <div id="mainWrapper"> ï»¿  <div id="headerWrapper">

26 Jun 2008, 6:51 PM

#2

kobra

Black Belt

Join Date:: Aug 2005
Location:: Arizona
Posts:: 31,500
Plugin Contributions:: 4

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

Have you edited any files?

What do you use to edit files?

26 Jun 2008, 6:56 PM

#3

mir13

New Zenner

Join Date:: May 2008
Posts:: 27
Plugin Contributions:: 0

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

Wow, Thank you for the super fast reply!!
Yes, many files-
I am using Microsoft Expression Web or just editing in the code editor of my host in the file manager.
I have been making changes all day, but refreshing the browsers after each change to make sure nothing goes haywire, but obviously something has-

Thanks again!

26 Jun 2008, 7:10 PM

#4

kobra

Black Belt

Join Date:: Aug 2005
Location:: Arizona
Posts:: 31,500
Plugin Contributions:: 4

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

Microsoft Expression Web !!! Similar to Front Page!!!

NEVER NEVER use a code generator to edit php files they tend to add un-needed stuff...

Use a "Plain Text: editor like note pad or Get a code editor like NotePad++, or Crimson Editor

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=95717&package_id=102072

http://www.crimsoneditor.com/

26 Jun 2008, 7:22 PM

#5

mir13

New Zenner

Join Date:: May 2008
Posts:: 27
Plugin Contributions:: 0

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

Thank you! Good to know- I am new to php.
So, in order to fix this problem, what should I do? I do not see these symbols in the code on the page in the code editor on my host or in Expression-

THANKS!

:smile:

26 Jun 2008, 7:31 PM

#6

kobra

Black Belt

Join Date:: Aug 2005
Location:: Arizona
Posts:: 31,500
Plugin Contributions:: 4

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

Use the builtin "grep" tool and search for "ï»¿ " and QUIT using Expression for this

https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=39

26 Jun 2008, 9:11 PM

#7

mir13

New Zenner

Join Date:: May 2008
Posts:: 27
Plugin Contributions:: 0

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

Thank you so much!!!

That worked great, I used the dev tool kit, found about 5 pages showing them at line 0. I could not see line zero, but just backspaced at line 1, saved, and it worked!

I will not be using Expression anymore!

Now if I can just get rid of the white space above my header graphic which is only showing up in IE, I may still have some hair!
I have been searching the forums and found a lot of entries, but have not had any luck. Maybe you could point me in the right direction if you get bored and have time.

Thank you!
:clap:

26 Jun 2008, 9:12 PM

#8

kobra

Black Belt

Join Date:: Aug 2005
Location:: Arizona
Posts:: 31,500
Plugin Contributions:: 4

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

A link to your site

26 Jun 2008, 9:13 PM

#9

mir13

New Zenner

Join Date:: May 2008
Posts:: 27
Plugin Contributions:: 0

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

Sorry, My brain is fried!
White space only showing in Firefox, not IE-
:frusty:

26 Jun 2008, 9:14 PM

#10

mir13

New Zenner

Join Date:: May 2008
Posts:: 27
Plugin Contributions:: 0

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

https://www.milesfromafrica.com/index.php

26 Jun 2008, 9:58 PM

#11

kobra

Black Belt

Join Date:: Aug 2005
Location:: Arizona
Posts:: 31,500
Plugin Contributions:: 4

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

Another hint: Always design in the most standards compliant browser for your platform(Not IE) and then after complete go back and fix any IE "quirks mode" issues

Try adding the highlighted line to this entry in your css

#tagline {
        display: none;
	color:#000000;
	font-size: 2em;
	text-align : center;
	vertical-align: middle;
	}

Or alternately, you can rem out the tagline div and code in your copy of tpl_header.php

16 Aug 2008, 3:28 PM

#12

aeternal

New Zenner

Join Date:: May 2008
Posts:: 21
Plugin Contributions:: 0

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

Just an update to this post. I too was having problems with these characters on certain pages. I found an excellent thread via google here. http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=540442. Basically it's a charset problem that firefox has which is easily remedied. Edit the english.php file in includes/langauges where it says define('charset', '8859-1'). You need to change the 8859-1 to utf-8. This will change all of your web pages into the utf-8 encoding scheme and eliminate those nasty characters. Hope this helps a few folks : )

16 Aug 2008, 4:44 PM

#13

aeternal

New Zenner

Join Date:: May 2008
Posts:: 21
Plugin Contributions:: 0

Re: Please help! ï»¿ What do these symbols mean?

Oh and just a quick followup. Folks should follow this great tutorial by CrystalKoi to completely switch over to utf-8 error free. http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=93439