background-image "url" not working

[futureproof]

I am trying to achieve a validated page so I have to place the background-image code into the CSS file. I have tried both examples (forget the spaces in the URL, I'm just trying to get around the min 5 post limit)

td.us {background-image: url(www . example . com / images / col . gif);}

and

td.us {background-image: url(.. / images / col . gif);}

When I plug the

<td class="us">

into the HTML page, the gif for the spanned row column will not appear. However, if I place the code into the HTML page, it does its job and fills the column; if I use the code, which I basically copied and pasted from another site, it doesn't work.

Any ideas?

[futureproof]

I'm using IE 7.0.5730.13 and was having trouble displaying a background image in CSS (see post above). I found a hack, of sorts, at this site that overcomes it - my bg image now displays although 'refresh' didn't help in the first instance and there is no floated element:

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/css/more-css-tricks.shtml

IE has a very strange bug where text or background images sometimes disappears from sight. These items are still actually there, and if you highlight everything on screen or hit refresh they'll often re-appear. Kind of strange, huh?

This problem mostly occurs on background images and on text next to a floated element. To remedy the problem, simply insert position: relative; into the CSS command for the disappearing element, and for some bizarre reason that'll usually fix the problem. If this doesn't work (it sometimes doesn't), assign a width to the offending element in the CSS and that should fix the problem.

The CSS code now reads

td.us  {background-image: url(../images/col.gif); position: relative;}

that is, with the addition of "position: relative;"; and there is no need for "repeat" or any other attribute - it fills the <td class="us"> cell nicely.

Interestingly, the url should read

 ../../images*

as the UA has to go up two directories to find col.gif (out of "i" into "html" out of "html" into "root" then down into "images" - or do I have that wrong?); this is a quirk, it seems, in my version of IE7.

I hope this helps other ppl with the same problem