Website is deformed on login page

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Your problem – the black bar initial position that I and others have mentioned. It corrects itself for us but it seems it doesn't for you. Looks like it only repositions once due to the caching.

The best explanation is that for some reason your machine isn't keeping up or ignoring part of the html. I have something similar happen at times when my isp is crawling – going unbelievably slow. The effects on web pages such as ebay are pretty extreme though, like no graphics just links. This site for me always loads as it's pretty simple. Most forums are. All in fact as far as I am aware. Browsers are capable of incomplete loads given a reason.

Reading about Mint suggests it's added an interface to make newer GTK graphics convert to older versions. Be interesting to see how long that approach lasts. Similar things have happened elsewhere. KDE went QT4 and Gnome went to a similar arrangement via GTK. All sorts of problems with both. Both are now pretty stable, pity KDE is going QT5 as it will probably be another rats nest for a while. As far as KDE4 and Gnome3 go there isn't really any need to do what Mint does any more.

You might be better of switching to XFCE as that fully supports GTK+3 now and has done for a while. LXDE might be another option and probably has better support.

KDE4 is pretty fast and light weight providing the graphics bells as whistles are turned off but even that aspect isn't as bad as it was. I'd guess Gnome is the same now.

I detect more I've never done anything else on this thread. Addblockers There isn't much need for them these days really. All people will see is adds that are based around what they have been looking at on the web. Fringe pseudo black areas on the web are different but they are good places to get ones machine hacked firewall or not. There is too much software using the web these days with who knows how many holes in it. Lots of free closed source applications will generally give people something they don't really want as well as what it's supposed to do – more of a problem for windows users.

I did use firefox but Google "bless" 'em caused a lot of browsers problems via Chrome so they all started rewrites and the initial Firefox offering was crap. It gained popularity initially as it offered tabbed browsing. Linux has had that for an awfully long time. Firefox doesn't really offer anything over others now and bookmarks can be imported into others. Opera on Linux still seems to have problems for me. This is probably down to a need to update my opensuse. The opera rpm on their site hasn't updated for ages.

Edit –  I just found that Chromium, I'm using that now just wont run java script graphics and can't do it at all. Seems to be down to google.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 09/12/2015 12:38:17

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

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

Haha, just checked and you were right Neil. ABP removes the ads at the top – but not the ones at the side, hence the confusion. Presumably it can only remove horizontal frames?

I don't want loads of ads I'll never click through filling the page, so for me the use of an ad blocker has benefits, not least reducing loading time.

As for popups, there are some sites that insist on trying them on and Chrome doesn't have an option to disable them unless you include "extensions" in that. Oh wait, ABP is a Chrome extension…

Absolutely no idea what John W1 is on about? GTQ5TK4 – que?

Merry

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

the ads at the side appear to be self hosted thus will not be blocked as come from the same site as the forum (and presumably the site takes responsibility for them) – there are still many needs for adblockers tho – any site that rents out banner space to others is open to abuse and even google has been ‘persuaded’ to host malware this way – luckily Linux is mostly free of problems as quite heterogeneous systems with I suspect more knowledgeable users but even here there have been attacks

BigAl’s feature is probably being caused by the network server blocking certain sites (eg many companies block facebook – there is a hidden tracking pixel from them on all pages).

[BigAlParticipant @bigal15229]

The problem existed long before I had a network server.

Alan

Edited By BigAl on 09/12/2015 18:28:48

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Hi Alan,

I too prefer Firefox but I'm quite prepared to use something else when I hit the odd problem. I wasn't suggesting that you dump Firefox, rather that you use a different browser to try and eliminate Firefox as the cause. If using A N Other browser lets you login and use the ME site properly you've learned something about your problem.

The one thing you said in last night's post that's distinctly non-standard compared with most of the users of this site is:

"My internet connection is via a business as opposed to a private account and my ISP does not block any traffic."

As far as I know all ISPs block certain categories of naughtiness behind the scenes, and they are very coy about their internal security measures. This is not least because ISPs have to protect themselves as well as their customers. But more significantly in your case a business account might well include better protection than a domestic account : there will certainly be several service differences.

It would be good to eliminate the business account as a possible cause because it is exactly the sort of common feature in your configuration that could be causing a number of different machines to misbehave in the same odd way. Is there any way you can test this by connecting one of your boxes to the internet using an ordinary domestic account, perhaps by asking a neighbour to help?

The set-up you describe should work – I suspect you're looking for a small glitch involving the ME site, Firefox and some other factor. Given that lots of people are successfully using linux and Firefox to browse this site all you have to do is pin down that "other factor". Unfortunately doing so seems to be quite a challenge. Sometimes I hate computers!

Cheers,

Dave

[BigAlParticipant @bigal15229]

Hi Dave,

Out of all the sites I have visited, and like most people I suspect that is hundreds, why is it only the ME site that is a problem?

Cheers

Alan

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Hello Al,

Is it possible that you havew set a minimum font size in Firefox

If this is slightly larger than the default then the page would show errors as you describe.

Neil

[BigAlParticipant @bigal15229]

Posted by BigAl on 07/12/2015 15:41:20:

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

Hi Neil,

I had wondered that as well so I checked. In the above post I said that after changing the font size I restarted FF. What I should have said is that I actually shutdown and rebooted the machine each time.

Dave, an addendum. I had checked ages ago but have rechecked. No one else on my network has had any problems with any websites.

Cheers

Alan

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Posted by Muzzer on 09/12/2015 13:04:25:

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

As for popups, there are some sites that insist on trying them on and Chrome doesn't have an option to disable them unless you include "extensions" in that. Oh wait, ABP is a Chrome extension…

Absolutely no idea what John W1 is on about? GTQ5TK4 – que?

Merry

Anyone who runs a Linux desktop probably does. Some flavours of desktop aka the windows bits use QT to handle the graphics plus other functional things and others use GTK. Both sort of look after the lower level functional aspects relating to desktops.

John

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Edited By John W1 on 10/12/2015 10:23:04

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Hi Alan,

You asked "Out of all the sites I have visited, and like most people I suspect that is hundreds, why is it only the ME site that is a problem?"

Well, I agree with Clivel who said earlier "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."

I think you have a combination problem in the sense that "your system" includes everything between you and the ME Site. I suspect that the ME Site is sending instructions to your browser that are touched by something else such that your browser misplaces the black bar. It is likely that when other sites malfunction you don't notice.

The services behind apparently simple web browsing are complicated and fluid. For example the ME Site's login page calls 9 different web sites all of which are capable of asking your browser to do things that might not work properly. ( The sites are http://www.model-engineer.co.uk, http://www.gstatic.com, http://www.google.com, http://www.google_analytics.com, http://www.facebook.com, static.ak.facebook.com, s-static.ak.facebook.com, connect.facebook.net, and ads.myhobbystore.co.uk )

Software and human errors are common on the various systems that comprise the Internet. As a result your browser may be asked to do stupid things and the way these are handled (or not!) might well cause the kind of problem you've got.

You might like to try right clicking the offending page and selecting "Inspect Element". This opens up the detail that Firefox is working with. You might see an error that relates to the black bar, though decoding this stuff isn't for the faint hearted.

My example doesn't explain what you're getting but Firefox reported the following errors and anomalies on my view of the ME login page:

Net Errors

GET http://ads.myhobbystore.co.uk/adserve/;ID=154425;size=728×90;setID=162072;type=iframe [HTTP/1.1 200 OK 338ms]
carouFredSel: No element found for "#CarouselMain". jquery.carouFredSel-6.0.4.js:4261:4
GET http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/images/website_images/Header980x222.jpg [HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found 34ms]
Password fields present on an insecure (http://) page. This is a security risk that allows user login credentials to be stolen.[Learn More] <unknown>
Password fields present in a form with an insecure (http://) form action. This is a security risk that allows user login credentials to be stolen.[Learn More]

Console

Error in parsing value for 'background'. Declaration dropped. default.css:2387:13
Error in parsing value for 'background-image'. Declaration dropped. default.css:2389:22
Expected colour but found 'top'. Error in parsing value for 'background-image'. Declaration dropped. default.css:2390:38
Expected ',' or '{' but found ';'. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector. default.css:2493:69
Expected 'none', URL, or filter function but found 'alpha('. Error in parsing value for 'filter'. Declaration dropped. cropper.css:23:8
Expected 'none', URL, or filter function but found 'alpha('. Error in parsing value for 'filter'. Declaration dropped. cropper.css:48:8
Expected 'none', URL, or filter function but found 'alpha('. Error in parsing value for 'filter'. Declaration dropped. cropper.css:97:8
Expected declaration but found '*'. Skipped to next declaration. jquery.bxslider.css:21:1
Unknown property '-moz-box-shadow'. Declaration dropped.

I see that you've eliminated the business account as a possible cause. Can you think of anything else in your configuration that's has been in place for a long time? It's a very odd bug in that "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." Also "One of the three machines (not working at the moment) has had a fresh, default install of LM and the first site I visited was the ME one." As your configuration is respectable, whatever is causing this bug might be very difficult to pin down. I've run out of ideas, at least for the moment.

Please try a different Browser – I think the site is worth it.

For those who prefer news of hands-on engineering I confess wasting yesterday afternoon making a complete horlicks of a simple brass screw. Mistakes included: misaligning and over-tightening a knurling tool so that it twisted off the tool-post; carefully turning the rod down to 2.75mm ready for an M3 thread, mangling the finished knurling on an otherwise perfect second attempt during parting off; and then breaking a digital caliper by dropping it. The root cause throughout the fiasco was operator error. I gave up in disgust and a barrage of bad language.

Cheers,

Dave

[Steven VineParticipant @stevenvine79904]

Perhaps BigAl can grab the source code for the webpage he is viewing and post it here in its entirety. (View Page Source or CtrlU etc)

We can then compare his source code (that has a possible problem) to another persons source code that has no problem.

Simplified. As I understand it (iirc), the code from a website is downloaded to a pc and arrives in the Document Object, whereupon the browser extracts the code and fixes up the display. (Ad blockers rewrite the code in the Document Object, thereby affecting the code and hence the display).

It would be interesting to see if there was any differences in the webpage source code that BigAl is seeing.

Steve

[DMBParticipant @dmb]

Further to my last post 6 Dec on here, I have cleared the history of sites recently visited on my mobile and lo and behold ME/MEW site now works perfectly! Apologies to MTM for blaming them.
John.

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

This web site may help sort out use of legacy and errors on pages. It's the one Opera use.

**LINK**

John

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