A regular reader has just informed me that, on the home page of this site, for several days now, she can't see the left column (navigation and pictures of the day) anymore and the middle (Lamma-zine) column is shifting all the way to the left of the screen.

She's using Internet Explorer 6 and 7 on a laptop PC and is pretty computer-literate.

I've tried the major PC browsers and can't find the problem, nothing seems to be missing.

Anybody out there got the same problem?

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Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

Works fine here with Firefox-1.5, Firefox-2, MSIE-6, MSIE-7, Safari and Camino browsers, using a laptop, a regular PC, a MacMini and a Linux PC.

_________________
Lead me not into temptation;
I can find it myself, thank you.

Thanks for testing, chuckm, and for showing off!

I might use your impressive hardware and software collection as a compatibility testbed in the future. OK?

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Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

Well... I haven't got the extensive range of hard and softwares, but the website looks fine on Mac Safari 1.3.2 and IE 5.2.

Fine in Opera 8 and Firefox 1.5 on Win 2k..

Just ask and I'll try my best to help. And thanks, Alan, for reminding me about Opera. I hardly use that one, so it slipped my (weak) mind.

Don't be too impressed, I need all this gear to test my own web sites for the Company, so I'm somewhat forced into having all this stuff. I've tinkered a bit with the "Total Validator" extension for Firefox which also looks out for compatibility with several other browsers. For my Company's site there are specific reasons it doesn't work well, but it seems to be a good general-purpose standards validator for most web situations.

_________________
Lead me not into temptation;
I can find it myself, thank you.

Are you really a penguin?

Yup ... a wine-drinkin', Linux-lovin' computer nerd. That's the worst kind.

Well, actually my primary job is to try and maintain a high level of distrust for Windoze. These days Microsloth is making my job relatively easy.

_________________
Lead me not into temptation;
I can find it myself, thank you.

I might have solved that little computer mystery that started this topic. If you switch JavaScript off in your browser - any browswer - then the left column of the home page vanishes immediately! As the left column is all JavaScript code - which I edit daily by hand for the Photo/Wildlife/Artwork Photos of the Day - it's the obvious reason.

The person above must have disabled JavaScript in theTools-Options by mistake. Even upgrading to Firefox 2 didn't solve the problem as all the options are inherited when you upgrade or switch to a non-MS browser.

This is kind of worrying as it's so easy to get rid of all the ads in the left column by simply switching JavaScript off. But disabling JavaScript would bother quite a few other websites as well.

Solving Internet mysteries like the one above... this all reminds about my old days - 11 years ago - as "Mr Internet" as they used to call me back then. I was the only one who knew anything about the Internet in the quasi-governmental organisation I was working in. I started my PowerPoint presentations in the Convention & Exhibition Centre's confererence hall with slides like "What is the Internet?", "What is a Website?" and "Why should your company have one?"

Nowadays almost every little child knows so much about the Internet, sometimes more than I do. I'm starting to feel really ooooold. Reminiscing about the "good, old days" is a sure sign of getting old....

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Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

I use the <NOSCRIPT> HTML tag to display a message to a user whose js is switched off, but I'm not sure if it will work in a frame.

I don't know if the <NOSCRIPT> tag will work independently inside a table row, but it's worth a try because it's a simple thing to use. If that doesn't produce the effect you want, you might have to split your "display" frame into sub-frames (left, center, right) so that the js message is displayed only in the desired segment of the page.

Just a thought.

Oh, and I can relate to the "feeling old" issue! Many years ago I used to visit various locations to give a talk entitled "What is UNIX and Why Should I Care?" . These days any IT manager worth his/her salt already knows this. My favourite quote, which always managed to wake up a sleepy audience: "UNIX is like Sex ... (long silent pause) ... if you have never experienced it, no amount of explaining will do. If you have, then you don't need an explanation" .

_________________
Lead me not into temptation;
I can find it myself, thank you.

Don't worry about it. Maybe you can use a web bug to find out what proportion of people are seeing your ads. But most users just use IE at default settings, those who change them know what they're doing and will resent you trying to force them to see ads.

I actually see the left column, but (in Opera) all the ads are blank boxes. I consider this a feature, not a bug. If it was plain HTML and not scripted I'd probably see them. So tricky code can be self-defeating. If you use the same methods as the less scrupulous spammers and popup advertisers you end up being blocked with them.

You are absolutely right, Alan.

Microsoft in their infinite wisdom make it anything but simple to get an ActiveX control loaded or to start up an embedded object, by forcing you to use Javascript workarounds just to avoid a patent dispute and to get around some of their own security changes. Firefox/Opera/Safari haven't foisted such things on us (yet).

Fortunately for L-G, the NOSCRIPT trick has been around for many years and doesn't trigger anything beyond a simple "you're scripting is off" message (or whatever polite text you choose to display).

Programming for the web used to be relatively simple and a lot of fun, but unscrupulous crackers/script kiddies/spammers have forced changes on us. Now you have to dive into AJAX and a lot of other esoteric stuff to have fun. That'll probably be compromised soon as well.

(*sigh*)

_________________
Lead me not into temptation;
I can find it myself, thank you.