vroom has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Still off topic:
As some of you may have noticed the images for this site haven't been loading since I added in the new code using layers so we could serve ads and hopefully pay some bills someday. The locations for the images are all correct. I was wondering if any of you had any suggestions? If you want to see the exact code just do a view source.

Oh yeah and anyone who helps me track this down is bound to get voted up....

TIA
vroom

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: Another Layers Question.
by Russ (Deacon) on May 11, 2000 at 06:00 UTC
    vroom,

    I've played with this a bit on my local system
    (Linux - RedHat5.2 - 2.2.12 kernel - Apache - Netscrape 4.07).

    The problem appears intermittently on this setup, but goes away (I haven't seen it go wrong, yet...) if I move the layer toward the bottom of the page and add top="5" left="5" to the tag.

    It now looks like:

    <layer src="http://adfu.blockstackers.com/servfu.pl?l,perlmonks,4720" + width=470 height=75 top="5" left="5"></layer>
    (Feel free to ignore my goofy alignment - I make everything fit in 80 columns)

    My theory: Based on observation, Netscrape gets confused at semi-random moments when it has to deal with layers/DHTML issues. Moving the layer tag away from the top of the HTML and defining its position (top="5" left="5") allows Netscrape to deal with the Monk image and the table before it tackles the layer.

    That sounds ridiculous, and I cringe to even suggest such a thing, but DHTML in Netscrape is just plain buggy...

    My first attempt was to W3C the thing (use <div> tag), but that would require some javascript to load the banner, so this is better if it works.

    Good luck!

    <Follow-Up>
    After some more research, the best answer would be to get blockstackers to just send you an <a> tag with an image inside, rather than insisting on an entire HTML document. Then you (and any other clients) could position the banner ad wherever and however you want...

    I poked through their source, and don't see any option you might use to suppress the <html> and <body> tags. I'd be willing to send them a patch if they need the help ;-)
    </Follow-Up>

    Russ

    P.S. You might consider:

    • Remove the backslashes in the clearpixel image height (they fall through to the HTML to the browser)
    • Remove the extra </font> (It's just after the go_button input, just before the <form>)
    They don't really affect anything, but...
Re: Another Layers Question.
by raflach (Pilgrim) on May 10, 2000 at 18:27 UTC
    I am afraid that I haven't noticed this problem... But that in itself may lend to troubleshooting. I am forced to use IE 4.x on WinNT at work (where I usually view this page) and all images fields etc. are in exactly the right places.

    Perhaps below other users could post their browser types and versions, and whether or not they experience a problem with the layers. I could easily see something like this being a browser type/version issue.

    At least then you would have something more to go on.
      Dunno if this helps, but I'm not seeing the images.
      Netscape Lite 4.72/Export, 31-Jan-00;
      4.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE #0
        Methinks we are gettings somewhere. I'd almost bet money that this is a netscape issue. Though there's always still the possibility that it's an IE only thing. Anybody got Opera or Mozilla, to check this thing out?
      Netscape 4.72 on Win95: banner on top is displayed, monk pictures are not.
      Opera 3.60 on same Win95: banner is not displayed, monk pictures are.
      Likewise on IE5 on WinNT, no problems.
Re: Another Layers Question.
by Anonymous Monk on May 10, 2000 at 20:31 UTC
    I am using Netscape 4.72 and I did not see the images. I viewed the source on the page and I was able to view the images individually. It is interesting to note that the fully qualified image references (bluesearch.gif for example) show up just fine.
Re: Another Layers Question.
by raflach (Pilgrim) on May 10, 2000 at 19:30 UTC
    Just downloaded a copy of Netscape communicator 4.61, and tried accessing the page with it. Everything appeared to come up correctly. The only difference I could see between it and IE was that the Banner Ad was left aligned instead of centered. I suppose this could be a problem eventually, but it doesn't conflict with anything else right now.

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