Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

HTML How to Make a Website Creating HTML Content Include External CSS

Posted by Daryl Stamps
Daryl Stamps
1,049 Points

normalize.css is not linking to index.html

I am having difficulty with my normalize.css file. Regardless of what I do there is no change on my webpage when I connect the normalize.css file to my index.html. I have tried different browsers (firefox and IE) and have had no changes. I feel that I have followed instructions exactly, but obviously I need another set of eyes to catch my mistake. Thank you for your help

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
      <meta charset="utf-8">      
      <title>Daryl Stamps | Special Effects Makeup Artist</title>
      <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/normalize.css">
      <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/main.css"> 
    </head>

body {
  background-color: orange;
}

(edited to fix typos)

2 Answers

Drew Schott
Drew Schott
8,484 Points
Drew Schott
Drew Schott
8,484 Points

you are not typing stylesheet correctly.

Daryl Stamps
Daryl Stamps
1,049 Points

Thanks Drew! I had a few friends look this over and none of us caught that typo. so annoying! anyways, i fixed the stylesheet error . . . but I am still having the same problem. the normalize.css file is still having zero effect on the main.hml file

Drew Schott
Drew Schott
8,484 Points
Drew Schott
Drew Schott
8,484 Points

Are you trying to change the body to orange in the normalize.css file, or the main.css file? If you are changing it in normalize, make sure there is not a body background color tag in main.css keeping it the original color. A tag in main.css will take priority over anything you type in normalize.css. Also, make sure you have the files names spelled correctly themselves, and that they are in the correct folders, keeping an eye on upper and lowercase.

Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,149 Points
Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,149 Points

That was my next suggestion, i make sure your link is correct. Next to your index file must be a folder named css, and than the css files?

Use the browsers dev tools to manually inspect the source code and see if css file is included or not? If the browser isn't finding the file, it'll show that in the dev tools.

Also make sure you expectations of what normalize.css does it correct. You'll see very little change with it, and it just smooths out some of the browsers inconsistencies from their default styles.

Daryl Stamps
Daryl Stamps
1,049 Points

thanks for your help Kevin. I tried your suggestions but to no avail. So i stepped away from it for 24 hours to reset my brain. I came back tonight, opened it up, ran the preview and voila! it was working! i seriously have not changed the data since my last login so i have no idea what has happened. Nonetheless it is working so I shall march forward.Thanks again!