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Website viewable problems! Possible BUG.

Forums: General Discussion
Created on: 08/15/08 12:10 PM Views: 3616 Replies: 8
Friday, August 15, 2008 at 12:10 PM

There have been 3 different occasions that I have had a chance to view my website from different computers in the last week from various businesses, teachers and classmates and I am not liking what I see. This is the scenario.

I go into a business to solicit a donation or to get a deal cut with a vendor and explain to them that I will list their business in our class directory, on our DVD and website if they would generously make a donation to our class or offer me a discount which in turn would bring business to our local businesses. Let me tell you this has worked GREAT! To make my "sale" I encourage them to go to our website.

My dilemma is... when these various people pull up my website all of which are at different locations throughout town the website has a GIANT gap of white where the top of the page generally starts so when you pull up the page instead of the class picture and wording being there it appears as if the page is blank. The page links are on the left. So without me standing there telling them "Scroll down, no scroll down some more, now scroll down some more" there is no way for them to even know that there is anything on the page and it looks like the website is not so great. On one of the computers the countdown clock actually said there were 2749 days left until the reunion when there were actually only 67 days left and so I pulled out my laptop and pulled it up and the countdown clock was correct. I did notice that the one one business yesterday was using Firefox.

WHY IS IT DOING THIS?

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Friday, August 15, 2008 at 5:09 PM - Response #1

First, I identified and fixed this problem for you. Now let me explain what was happening:

The first photo on your page, and your mega jackpot raffle graphic as well, were too large for your home page content column. Although they didn't cross over your right hand module boxes, both of those graphics did cross into the margin. Here's what happens with Internet Explorer and Firefox when this occurs:

Internet Explorer just goes "whatever, I'm just gunna display this graphic anyway, whether it crosses over another graphic or not." So Internet Explorer simply displayed your graphics fine even though they were both cutting into the margin. It's for this reason that you'll often see people's large Playlist players crossing over right hand module boxes in Intenet Explorer. You have 270 pixels available for images or third party plugins in the home page content column -- that's it. Anything larger will cause issues.

Firefox goes "No way, I'm not gunna overlap two items no matter what, and I'm also going to honor the specified margin. Since this doesn't fit, I'm just gunna knock the images down on the page to the first place that they will fit." In this case, that's at the end of your home page right hand module boxes. And that's exactly why everyone was seeing the large white gap in Firefox.

Solution for this is simple: Slightly reduce the size of those two images so they fit correctly. Problem solved. When you get into tables and columns and images and html, etc., it's always good to understand how different web browsers display things differently. If you stick to the "270 pixel wide" rule for home page images and third party plugins, you'll never have a cross browser problem like this.


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Edited 08/15/08 5:13 PM
Friday, August 15, 2008 at 5:20 PM - Response #2

Thank you for fixing it and for explaining it! I just added the MEGA Jackpot at about 11PM last night so that one was not the culprit but the picture was. I think the best thing for me to do for now on is to follow your suggestions as well as view the webpage myself in both IE and FF after I have done any changes.

It also explains why people were not following my simple directions if they were new to the website when they first came onto the webpage. It is because they could not see it. lol

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!!!

I get to go to Fry's tomorrow to go shopping for all kinds of fun things and I can't wait WHOOOHOOOOOOOO

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Friday, August 15, 2008 at 7:23 PM - Response #3

FYI, it's always a good idea to view your web site in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. There are some differences in all 3 of these major browsers. A lot of PC people think Safari is only a "Mac thang" but it's not. PC users can also download and install Safari at www.apple.com. Also don't forget, Safari is the browser built into the super popular iPhone. So if you want your web site to look right on people's iPhones, you should definitely check it using the Safari browser and ensure everything is displaying as you intended.


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Edited 08/15/08 7:26 PM
Sunday, December 14, 2008 at 3:23 PM - Response #4

Hi again,

Long story short, I saw today that I send an email each time someone joins and it gives instructions to install a desktop shortcut. The shortcut defaults to a browser (firefox)... This is a browser I have not used. The problem is that WYSIWYG is not applying here. The page is all messed or at least different from what I had created and viewed while using IE. (in IE everything looked correct) What should I do or can the shortcut default to IE instead of firefox?

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Sunday, December 14, 2008 at 4:08 PM - Response #5

In your case it's your marquee. You can't set it to 90%, because Firefox interprets that to mean 90% of your page width. Which blows out the page, shoving the content to the bottom where the marquee fits. I changed your 90% to 370 pixels instead, which solves this problem. If you add future marquees to your home page left content column, just set the width to 370 and you won't have this problem in Firefox again.

Note, your computer's default browser is set to Firefox. That's why your shortcut is launching Firefox and not Internet Explorer. Change your default browser to Internet Explorer and then your shortcut will launch IE instead of Firefox.


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Sunday, December 14, 2008 at 4:25 PM - Response #6

ok thank you

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 11:53 PM - Response #7

I only have IE. I understand the issue, but dont use Firefox or other browswers. Is there a way to check out mysite to see if we have the same issue?
Is there a tool you can put up that checks your sites under different browswers?

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Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 2:35 AM - Response #8

The easiest thing to do is just grab Firefox for free at http://www.firefox.com and see for yourself.

Here's a way to see what your web site looks like in numerous browsers and browser versions all at once: http://browsershots.org

Don't get too hung up on what your site looks like in obscure or really old browser versions though -- nearly nobody uses them anymore.


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