Website is deformed on login page

[BigAlParticipant @bigal15229]

Hi Katy,

Thank you for you input. A step forward. I logged out then cleared every individual history reference to ME then cleared my cache. When I went to log on again the problem still manifested itself. However, Once logged in all was okay. Then I logged out again and was back with the malformed site. Here are a couple of screen shots. I hope they help

Cheers
Alan

Before actual log in

 

After loggin in

Edited By BigAl on 07/12/2015 13:46:15

Edited By BigAl on 07/12/2015 13:47:22

Edited By BigAl on 07/12/2015 13:47:56

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

the allowance of spaces within names was introduced by Microsoft as a deliberate ploy to break compatibility with some of its competition – included in that dodgy FAT patent that MS employed to extract money from many users of what was later accepted by the US court as an obvious extension

Linux will handle them tho often need to quote name as spaces often used as a delimiter in various scripts.

Why is there a farcebook tracking pixel in the first place?

[Katy PurvisParticipant @katypurvis79544]

Thanks Alan, I'll have to keep digging then, nevermind.

[BigAlParticipant @bigal15229]

Katy, I do wonder if it is in the CSS. Here are two more screenshots. Note the position of the subscription advert on the log in page, screenshot 1, then in its correct position after I have logged in, screenshot 2.

Alan

Screenshot 1

 

Screenshot 2

 

Edited By BigAl on 07/12/2015 14:14:09

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by BigAl on 07/12/2015 13:13:08:

I learnt long ago that ANY file name, be it a picture, word processor documet, CAD file or whatever should not have any spaces in its name. Use an underscore (_) or hyphen (-). If course, if no one has ever pointed this out you have no chance of knowing. I believe that this originates back in the original UNIX days when a space was not included in the file name specifacations. Microsoft has not helped matters by its instance of have a folder called 'My Documents' but of course Microsoft helps Microsoft rather than its users.

Cheers
Alan

Microsoft's long filenames were a gift from the Gods of Computing to someone like me who started out on ZX80 and punched cards on a mainframe.

My Joomla website insists on space-free filenames and I HATE them with a vengeance

[Katy PurvisParticipant @katypurvis79544]

That's what I had thought, and had tweaked already. Unfortunately, I suspect it is to do with the fonts and font sizes in your setup, and I can't test that from here, as I only have a windows laptop, an ipod mini and an android tablet, none of which show the same symptoms. It looks likes I will have to decrease the header font size for everyone to fix this, which will probably lead to people changing their settings to increase the font size in their browsers, and will cause a whole lot of other problems.

I'm sorry, I only work part time, and have been looking at this for almost twice as long as I am supposed to work today, and we have no other developers, so I will have to think about what to try next overnight.

I will put it on my list of jobs and hope to resolve it soon.

[BigAlParticipant @bigal15229]

Hi Neil,

I still have my ZX80 in its original white polystyrene packaging. I also still have my Commodore Pet and printers together witha duel 5.5 inch FDD. You should be used to the no space rule by now. He, he, he.

Alan

[BigAlParticipant @bigal15229]

Posted by Katy Purvis on 07/12/2015 14:29:01:

That's what I had thought, and had tweaked already. Unfortunately, I suspect it is to do with the fonts and font sizes in your setup, and I can't test that from here, as I only have a windows laptop, an ipod mini and an android tablet, none of which show the same symptoms.

I will put it on my list of jobs and hope to resolve it soon.

Hi Katy, Is is easy enought to duel boot !!!!

I still do not understand why it should happen on all of my machines and all the various installations of all the different OSs that I have used. Ah well.

Thank you very much for trying.

Cheers

Alan

[Katy PurvisParticipant @katypurvis79544]

I'll look into that, but I doubt this laptop would be able to cope with it, it chugs along very badly as it is. But I'll see if I can…I don't see any other way of reproducing the problem.

[Enough!Participant @enough]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 06/12/2015 21:10:39:

Perhaps we could do what some websites are starting to do and embed images saying 'please turn off your ad blocker if you can see this, to help pay for the website'.

Turn off the "flashing" part of the ads and I'd be more than happy to. But if the flashing ads are forced on me I'd rather give up the site.

[Enough!Participant @enough]

As far as the original problem goes, I had the same thing a couple of years ago. I did something to fix it (at my end) but can't for the life of me remember exactly what (it's the second thing to go).

BigAl, have you tried changing the text size in your browser (usually CTRL key with + or – minus will do it and most browsers, afaik, will rememember the last setting for a particular site)?

[BigAlParticipant @bigal15229]

As an experiment I have just changed my default font from every integer size from 10 to 16. Each time I restarted FF and returned to the ME site. The changes made no difference to the position of the bar.

Alan

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Rather than dual boot it's better to use a live cd or boot from a usb stick Katy. Especially for your purposes.

You will find instructions for creating either on the web. Live CD's were available for all distro's but for some reason most now seem to prefer people creating them for themselves especially for from a USB stick. There are comprehensive instructions around. Just google boot mint from a live cd or usb stick.

You'll probably find that your laptop works a lot more quickly too. BigAl best tell you which desktop he is using. Linux is organised that way. Windows has a kernel and dos an windows sit on that for the users. Linux has a kernel and several different windowsy desktops that can sit on it plus ugggg BASH instead of dos. BigAl's desktop might be the problem. Many Linux users use KDE or Gnome- that one is the standard one on Ubuntu which currently probably has the most users.

Given how Linux systems are put together it's pretty amazing they work at all but underneath there are what might be called standards for providing graphics for instance so the desktops are generally driven the same way but look different and have differing facilities. I'd guess by it's nature that the ones for Mint are fairly light weight.

John

–

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

This is why I don't make much use of firefox. I use matrix type colour management and this is what comes up on the screen as it doesn't check for colour management correctly.

Things might look like that given LSD.

Apart from that it works on here but I did notice that text in a black bar appeared low down on the home page and then bounced up to the correct place. Nothing noticeable on the log in.

I have it's fonts set as follows.

Under the true type button on content in properties. I assume allow pages to choose is essential. Makes no difference if i uncheck it here. This time I noticed that both of the 2 top coloured text bars on the home page move about after loading for the first time. I'd guess caching prevents it happening on refreshes. This doesn't happen on any of my other browsers or if it does it's too quick for me to notice.

John

–

[ASFParticipant @asf]

Not sure if this is new, but this page displays as below

 

Edited By ASF on 07/12/2015 17:49:09

[Enough!Participant @enough]

There are posts in this thread from 2 years ago that seem to relate to the same problem as BigAl is reporting. It's a long thread and I don't have time at the moment to go through the whole thing to see if/how it got resolved. If anyone wants to …………

(I did notice a reference to compatibility mode which might be worth a try).

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by ASF on 07/12/2015 17:48:52:

Not sure if this is new, but this page displays as below

Edited By ASF on 07/12/2015 17:49:09

That means you have an adblocker on.

Neil

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by Katy Purvis on 07/12/2015 15:18:58:

I'll look into that, but I doubt this laptop would be able to cope with it, it chugs along very badly as it is. But I'll see if I can…I don't see any other way of reproducing the problem.

Dual booting will not slow your laptop down at all. The two OSs are kept entirely separate. You just need a minimum of about 20GB free disk space for the live disk installer to create a new partition. In fact you are likely to find that your laptop flies when running Linux

Russell.

[clivelParticipant @clivel]

Posted by BigAl on 07/12/2015 15:11:01:

Posted by Katy Purvis on 07/12/2015 14:29:01:

That's what I had thought, and had tweaked already. Unfortunately, I suspect it is to do with the fonts and font sizes in your setup, and I can't test that from here, as I only have a windows laptop, an ipod mini and an android tablet, none of which show the same symptoms.

I will put it on my list of jobs and hope to resolve it soon.

Hi Katy, Is is easy enought to duel boot !!!!

Actually unless Katy is able to duplicate your environment closely, it is highly unlikely that she will be able to duplicate the problem by simply installing the same OS and browser as you.
For example the screenshot below:

This shows Firefox 42.0 running on Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon 64 bit in the left hand window.
The right hand window contains Firefox 35.01 running on Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca 32 bit in a VMWare Session.
In both cases the web site appears to be behaving correctly.

So it would seem that the problem is not caused by your choice of OS and browser, but is instead caused by something else on your system, Until we can establish what that is, it is extremely unlikely that Katy will be able to duplicate the problem so as to create a fix.

Clive

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 07/12/2015 19:17:10:

Posted by ASF on 07/12/2015 17:48:52:

Not sure if this is new, but this page displays as below

Edited By ASF on 07/12/2015 17:49:09

That means you have an adblocker on.

Neil

I always have Adblock Plus running in Chrome and have never had a problem like this. The authorised ads (in the panels) still work but none of the popups are allowed unless you disable it.

The only reason I keep IE (and FF) is for the odd site that won't work with Chrome.

Murray

[ASFParticipant @asf]

Yes that is correct Neil. Thanks for reminding me I have it on

Oddly, when I want to buy something, I dont look at adverts on a website. I tend to look for others that recommend a site, or put what I require into a google search. Maybe i am odd there 😛

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Posted by Muzzer on 07/12/2015 20:40:04:

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 07/12/2015 19:17:10:

Posted by ASF on 07/12/2015 17:48:52:

Not sure if this is new, but this page displays as below

Edited By ASF on 07/12/2015 17:49:09

That means you have an adblocker on.

Neil

I always have Adblock Plus running in Chrome and have never had a problem like this. The authorised ads (in the panels) still work but none of the popups are allowed unless you disable it.

The only reason I keep IE (and FF) is for the odd site that won't work with Chrome.

Murray

What pop up's ? Apart from dodgy sites that need some care when visited anyway no one uses them.

John

–

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Also this in relationship to pop ups. In all browsers I am aware of

Chromium not Chrome, it's for runner so Chrome will be similar.

John

–

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Hi BigAl, you have an interesting problem. I notice your comment:

As I said, it is a persistent problem across, what is now quite a few different versions of FF and on three different computers, three 32 bit and one 64 bit.

So you have a situation that's extremely common in your environment but rare elsewhere. I have access to a number of different machines running El Capitan (MAC), Ubuntu 15.10 and Windows 10. The ME site works with all operating systems and with all the browsers I had time to try (Firefox, Chrome, IE and Dooble). On most of these I use two ad-blockers.

The only similar problem I had was with Firefox on Windows 10 where the black bar was briefly misplaced before reappearing in the correct place. This only happened once but it does hint that there's something odd about the way the bar is rendered.

For security and privacy reasons most of my browsing is done from Ubuntu, mostly using Firefox. I have a good look at the ME site most days and haven't noticed any problems with it.

You might just be unlucky, but I suggest your issue may be due to something in your environment: something that is common to 3 different computers. For example:

• Your ISP may be applying some form of blocking. I think this is unlikely, but…
• Your gateway/router may be applying some form of security. It is worth checking the settings and perhaps trying a factory reset.
• Have you installed an additional firewall or other network devices?
• Is your hardware similar on all three boxes? In particular do the machines have the same graphics card? Not all cards are well supported by linux; some need to be tweaked or have special software loaded.
• Are you using the same video screen on all three machines? Sometimes these are fussy.
• The common factor may be you! Did you install anything in the way of software or browser plugins that might be interfering? Did you use the same installation media? – perhaps it was corrupt. You seem to be computer literate – did you change anything on all three boxes?

Apologies if I missed it but I don't think you've tried a browser other than Firefox yet. They are easy to download and install – Ubuntu software centre lists at least 10. You only need one to work!

Cheers

Dave

[BigAlParticipant @bigal15229]

Oh dear. I know this post now stretches to four pages so I will restate my position.

I am currently running Linux Mint 17.2 using the Cinnamon desktop version. The two desktop machines are of considerable different ages and were built by me from the case up. There are considerable differences in the motherboards, processors, memory, power supplies and graphics cards. I have never used any form of ad blocker and none of the machines have any anti virus software running. Both my network server and email servers do however. Neither of those are ever used to surf to web or for any other daytime activities. My internet connection is via a business as opposed to a private account and my ISP does not block any traffic. One of the three machines has had a fresh, default install of LM and the first site I visited was the ME one. The problem of the misplaced black bar was sill in evidence. I have never used any browser other than FF and do not intend to. I am not prepared to change my everyday method of working to access one forum on one website.

This problem is not new. It was in evidence when I experimented with Debian, OpenSuse, Centos, and Ubuntu all of which was several years ago. I dealt with it in those days by simply not using the ME website. This post originated as I returned to the ME site and found the problem still existed.

 

Alan

Edited to update the number of pages in the post

Edited By BigAl on 08/12/2015 22:12:22

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