Web sites not rendering properly

Mark · Post by **Mark** » July 7th, 2003, 4:02 am

Hi,

I have just tried out the Firebird browser, it looks very good well done to the people who coded it.

I wanted to report 2 web pages that don't render properly they are:

www.eetimes.com
www.bbc.co.uk

My apologies if this is not the proper place to post this but I couldn't find any obvious place to send this to. Perhaps an extra heading could be created for web pages that cause problems.

Adios,
Mark

Post by **amr** » July 7th, 2003, 4:42 am

I'm no authority, but I think this would fall under "Evangelism".

BTW, I tried both those, and they WFM. What was each site doing that was a problem for you?

Mark · Post by **Mark** » July 7th, 2003, 6:12 am

Hi Amr,

When viewing the BBC and EE Times websites the header appears okay but the main body text takes a huge amount of space with most of it empty. I think both of these sites use tables to help with there layout but in this case each cell is given some maximum size and never gets resized to fit around the contents in the cell.

Hope that makes sense, although you've got me worried if these work for you.

Thanks,
Mark

Post by **old jasonb** » July 7th, 2003, 6:20 am

Both sites render just fine for me too - no extra space that I can see. (I'm using Mozilla 7/6-08 under XP.)

SushiFugu · Post by **SushiFugu** » July 7th, 2003, 6:26 am

Both sites WFM using the Firebird build in my sig.

And welcome to the boards, Mark

Mark · Post by **Mark** » July 7th, 2003, 6:43 am

Oh well, guess its just me then. Its not the first time I've seen this effect as Opera also showed the same problem with the BBC site. This probably means I've set up something strange on my machine thats causeing the problem. I think I'll just headbutt the computer screen until its time to go home.

Thanks guys,
Mark

Mark · Post by **Mark** » July 11th, 2003, 2:00 am

Hi,

I have tried the Firebird browser on another computer and sure enough the EEtimes and BBC web sites both rendered correctly. Also if I save the website source and load it from a local file it seems to be correct (Although missing all the pictures, but I would have suspected that to be so).

It seems that there is some setting on my computer that is causing problems, if I ever work out what it is I will pass it on.

Adios,

Mark

raj_bhaskar · Post by **raj_bhaskar** » July 11th, 2003, 4:36 am

Mark wrote:When viewing the BBC and EE Times websites the header appears okay but the main body text takes a huge amount of space with most of it empty.

I occasionally see this as well and have done so for a long time, but it appears to be random, with no pattern, so I've not bothered filing a bug, since there's no reliable way of reproducing it.

Basically the symptoms are that very occasionally, a page will render the first, say, 2/3 screenful and then there will be a huuuuuuuge gap (either vertical or horizontal -- although the latter is rarer) before the rest of the page is rendered. However, this doesn't always happen on the same page. Sometimes clearing the cache fixes it, other times a browser restart.

Do these symptoms ring a bell for anyone?

Mark · Post by **Mark** » July 11th, 2003, 7:48 am

Hurrah,

I have worked out how to reproduce this on my computer, unfortunately trying it on another computer didn't have the same effect.

It seems to be linked to what type of user I am. Administrators have no problems with loading the BBC and EETimes websites but if I change the user to a Guest or Power User then these web sites don't render properly. Don't know if this helps but it is certainly bazaar.

Adios,
Mark

Post by **amr** » July 11th, 2003, 9:21 am

That seems (to me, anyway) to indicate differences in Profiles.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » July 11th, 2003, 9:39 am

Even if it is the same user and changing them from Power User to Administrator and back again? Only while set as Administrator did the web pages render properly.

Old Persist · Post by **Old Persist** » July 12th, 2003, 1:42 pm

I have the bbc as my homepage so I see it all the time. It always renders fine for me. Sometimes there are empty spaces but I think that’s just ‘cos they change the page all the time, it’s always being worked on. If you want to see a page that renders badly look at http://www.newscientist.com/ The lines of text are so close together they’re practically overlapping. It’s even worse if you click on one of the headlines and look at the panel on the left. Increasing the minimum font size helps a bit. Is there some code I could add to userContent.css that would render the lines further apart? I wouldn’t know where to begin.
I Emailed them the other day but I don’t think they’re interested. The site pays for itself with advertising so they’d probably prefer we were using IE.

Old Persist · Post by **Old Persist** » July 15th, 2003, 11:12 am

I’ve just had a reply from the webmaster at New Scientist who says ”Thanks for your email. We are aware of this problem with Mozilla and are working on a fix however it will not go live until the next site re-design where we will correct this coding error. Unfortunately I can not provide an ETA at this time. My apologies for any inconvenience caused.” so maybe there’s hope. Get typing out those Emails of complaint! We may get somewhere yet.

Post by **shadytrees** » July 15th, 2003, 12:30 pm

Yep, I've sent an email to New Scientist too, but no reply yet. Let's keep bugging them. :-)

dakboy · Post by **dakboy** » July 16th, 2003, 6:10 pm

Persist wrote:I’ve just had a reply from the webmaster at New Scientist who says ”Thanks for your email. We are aware of this problem with Mozilla and are working on a fix however it will not go live until the next site re-design where we will correct this coding error. Unfortunately I can not provide an ETA at this time. My apologies for any inconvenience caused.” so maybe there’s hope. Get typing out those Emails of complaint! We may get somewhere yet.

Don't flood the guy. He's not stonewalling you, he admits there's a problem and they're working on it. Big sites don't get changed overnight, and you've no idea what the required changes are, or how deep they run. Unless the problem stops the site from working at all for a nontrivial number of people, they're not going to rush it through.

Have you filed a Tech Evangelism bug for this so it stays on the radar of the Evangelism project, just to check in every now and then on it?