in reply to Another Layers Question.

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>

[download]
(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:

They don't really affect anything, but...

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom