Design a Greeting Card - Step 23

Tell us what’s happening:

I cannot pass the design a greeting card lesson 23 in the css sections. Do not reply with
Your solution works from my end. Please try one of the following steps to move forward.

Click on the “Restart Step” button and force a refresh of your page with CTRL + F5 then try to paste the code in again.

or - Try the step in incognito or private mode.

or - Disable any/all extensions that interface with the freeCodeCamp website (such as Dark Mode, Ad Blockers, or Spellcheckers), and set your browser zoom level to 100%. Both of these factors can cause tests to fail erroneously.

or - Ensure your browser is up-to-date or try a different browser.

I hope one of these will work for you.

or the rest of this copy/paste reply as nothing works. I have tried multiple browsers, including chrome, safari, Firefox, brave, your app, reset, refresh. Even copy and pasted the css code from lesson 24 in and it still failed. It shows that whatever checks the code is failing it since it failed your own code from the next lesson which I only did as a last ditch bail Mary thinking maybe I formatted something wrong or had a typo. So please actually give me a solution instead of refresh my browser. One last thing to note while I was trying to figure it out, while in the app I ran the lab mode. It shows that the .card-links a{} is correct. The part that is flagging as incorrect is outline: 2px solid yellow; so that is whatever the checker is having an error in most likely.

Your code so far

<!-- file: index.html -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Greeting Card</title>
    <link href="styles.css" rel="stylesheet">
  </head>
  <body>
    <div class="card" id="greeting-card">
      <h1>Happy Birthday!</h1>
      <p class="message">
        Wishing you all the happiness and joy on your special day!
      </p>
      <div class="card-links">
        <a href="#send" class="send-link">Send Card</a>
        <a href="#share" class="share-link">Share on Social Media</a>
      </div>
  	</div>
    <section id="send">
      <h2>Sending your card...</h2>
      <p>Card successfully sent to your recipient!</p>
    </section>
    <section id="share">
      <h2>Sharing your card...</h2>
      <p>Your card was shared on social media!</p>
    </section>
  </body>
</html>
/* file: styles.css */
body {
  font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
  padding: 40px;
  text-align: center;
  background-color: brown;
}

.card {
  background-color: white;
  max-width: 400px;
  padding: 40px;
  margin: 0 auto;
  border-radius: 10px;
  box-shadow: 0 4px 8px gray;
  transition: transform 0.3s, background-color 0.3s ease
}

.card:hover {
  background-color: khaki;
  transform: scale(1.1);
}

h1::before {
  content: "🥳 ";
}

h1::after {
  content: " 🥳";
}

.message {
  font-size: 1.2em;
  margin-bottom: 20px;
}

.card-links {
  margin-top: 20px;
  display: flex;
  justify-content: space-around;
}

.card-links a {
  text-decoration: none;
  font-size: 1em;
  padding: 10px 20px;
  border-radius: 5px;
  color: white;
  background-color: midnightblue;
  transition: background-color 0.3s ease;
}

.card-links a:hover {
  background-color: orangered;
}

.card-links a:active {
  background-color: midnightblue;
}

.card-links a:focus {
  outline: 2px solid yellow;
}

/* User Editable Region */

/* User Editable Region */

Your browser information:

User Agent is: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 26_5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/149.0.7827.137 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

Challenge Information:

Design a Greeting Card - Step 23

GitHub Link: freeCodeCamp/curriculum/challenges/english/blocks/workshop-greeting-card/67333b1d5f4a7340a121973a.md at main · freeCodeCamp/freeCodeCamp · GitHub

Reset the lesson and run the same code again, it passes on my end.


Already did that. Still didn’t work.

Post the whole CSS code. Also, kindly be using actual code instead of screenshots, it’ll give an easier time to anyone debugging your work.

Hi @alecsgordon,

Just for kicks, try it like this: outline: yellow solid 2px;

Happy coding

@stephenmutheu
The code is literally sitting at the top of the screen. It’s the same. Except I forgot one space between outline: 2px.

@dhess
That didn’t work either. Tried every combination of it.

You earlier stated that your code did not pass dues to some errors, then you reset the lesson and now you seem to get a different hint, I asked for the current code to test for any changes made cause the one you provided earlier runs perfectly on my end. The problem might be in other sections of your code.

I notice you’re using a new OS (May 2026) with users reporting issues like sluggishness.

Do you have another device you can use for this step?

I never posted that I got errors. I stated that whatever checks the solution is giving errors on outline: 2px solid yellow; and I’m starting to think that’s what is causing the problem. I like @dhess try as it suggested possibly the order of operations in checking my answer to the correct one was out of order. Or if the checker was set out of order. Like if it compares my answer to the description, or if it compares my answer to an answer someone manually typed as a possible spelling error could cause each persons lesson to fail. I’m new at html and css but am well versed in gd script and ok at cpp. I debugged this code snippet for about 30 minutes trying to figure it out before coming here. Then tried every provided solution here and still doesn’t work. And the thing is. I even went to lesson 24 and copied the css code that is automatically added from the previous lesson and pasted it at the end of the css file in lesson 23 and it still didn’t pass. Which I also stated above. It has nothing to do with my code. Or even talks code. There is something messed up in the way the code is validated or marked as correct. Which I even stated showing how the only part that shows not being correct is the outline: 2px solid yellow;

@dhess
I have also noticed that most people that are having this same issue are using apple products. I have had no issues up until this point and my iPhone is currently the only device I have that I can do these lessons on. I have had no issues except for some minor inconveniences like the app not being able to submit my lesson if I minimize the app until I back out to the main menu and reopen it and put a cursor in the code field. Or the top lessons bar is always expanded whenever navigating the apps menu. Should also note that everything up until this point was fully done on the app until this lesson where I have tried as many possible things as I can think of and still can’t get it to pass. I do understand I can just continue with my lessons and come back to this but it bothers me a lot trying to figure out why it won’t accept the exact answer. (Pasted from next lesson)

I feel your pain. This challenge also uses transition properties in two of the CSS selectors, which have caused issues in other challenges because the delay borks the tests. But if your OS is sluggish, I’m thinking that’s the issue here…for the same reason. But that’s just my best guess. As to why this step and none of the others? No clue.

Maybe you can get to a library computer and try this step there …

But I’m thinking you should just move on and skip this step for now, at least until some of the pain points in your new OS upgrade are resolved.

@dhess
Well I appreciate your help. And will most likely try that then.

I just wanted to update everyone. My boss let me use his pc he had and it worked first try. Something with apple/iPhone is causing the issue for the code not working. Even if your code is correct it didn’t work. @dhess is most likely correct when it comes to something with this Apple update. But not fully sure as I have no way of trying previous versions. Either way it allowed all other lessons to be completed on iPhone and that one completed first try on pc. Hope this helps.

Lastly @dhess thank you for all the help and creative solutions as it may not have fixed the root cause of the issue, but definitely narrowed it down to possibly being the device I was using as everything else worked fine so was completely stumped why it didn’t on here. Thanks.

can you report this as a bug from the menu inside the app? as it is specific to the app