Saturday, August 20, 2011

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture, and Mercury is still in retrograde

First the Sheba picture:


First, this is more or less the picture I was trying to get for last week's post. It would have been better if the original image hadn't been tilted by about 30 degrees, 'cause then I wouldn't have had to cut her tongue off, but hey, we're making progress, and I really like this picture despite the missing tongue, so I'm not going to complain.

Second:

I've received an e-mail from a reader who tells me that the PATSP header picture has been displaying differently for him/r for the last few weeks:

A minor change has occurred in how your page appears to me; the title block no longer has a full background of the transmitted light leaf picture: instead, the picture fills part of the title box, with a thick vertical stripe of background color at the top and bottom of the box. I think it's been like this for a few weeks. Perhaps this is purposeful, but just in case it's not, I'm using Firefox 6.0 and Windows 7.

So I was wondering whether A) this is happening for anybody else (I'm using Firefox 6.0 and Windows XP, and it looks fine to me.), and B) whether anybody has any ideas about what to do to fix it. I've tried deleting and re-uploading the photo, which didn't help. I haven't changed anything about the site except the colors and the header, and the header is exactly the same size (640 x 233 px) as the previous headers, so if they worked, this should also.

This is what the header looks like to me in Firefox:


In Internet Explorer (which I never use), I get the background-color bars at the top and bottom of the header, though. How about yourself?




Naturally one blames Mercury. Anybody with any theories about what's going on or ideas for how to stop it is invited to share. I suspect what's going to have to happen is that I'm going to have to redesign the blog template, though I don't want to.


13 comments:

Plowing Through Life (Martha) said...

Love the photo of Sheba! As for the image, it doesn't display properly for me. It used to, though. I don't remember when it changed. I use Explorer & Windows XP. You'd probably have to go into the code, find out exactly how much width and height that space is, crop your image to that exact size and upload again. This may or may not solve your problem; just a suggestion. Or what I would try, anyway.

Pat said...

It looks fine with Google Chrome. I woke up my dormant Internet Explorer 8 and it was shown badly, as yours looks. Back to your coffin, IE8. The image is the same size but the box is much taller than it should be. The best thing to do would be to send an email to Bill Gates and get him to sort it.

Pat said...

I know nothing of such things but I have just noticed that in IE8 STRANGEST PEOPLE is on two lines rather than one and the subtitle has had its lines made more equal by processing the words. Just that Bill loves those big margins?

The Phytophactor said...

The appearance of the blog may have to do with the compatiblity setting, whether on or off, in the Internet Browser.

nycguy said...

Looking at your source code, the only thing I can see (and I'm by no means an expert) is that you specify the exact size of the background image height and width in pixels.

I think that means that the browser is not permitted to adjust the size of the image to the actual size of the window.

You don't want to distort th image, so perhaps a better approach would be to force the framing lines to have dimensions corresponding to those of the image.

CelticRose said...

I'm using IE9 and Vista and I'm seeing the stripes of background color at the top and bottom of the box. Also, like Pat, I'm seeing the words "Strangest People" on 2 lines instead of one. Otherwise, everything looks the same.

I don't know when it started doing that. I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out.

Just tried it in Firefox and it looks the same as your screenshot.

Like the pic of Sheba. :)

nycguy said...

Yup, the phytophactor nailed it. I can switch between the behviors by changing the compatibility setting on my IE9.

mr_subjunctive said...

All:

Okay, so I found the compatibility setting thing in the IE 8 tools menu, and when I clicked it, I got

PLANTS ARE THE
STRANGEST PEOPLE

on a background that was properly sized. When I click it again, it returns to

PLANTS ARE THE
STRANGEST
PEOPLE

and the header image is too short for the header box.

Which brings me to the question, what is "compatibility view," and why does it exist? Googling for it brings up sites saying that it's basically an adjustment of IE for older webpages that were designed before IE 9 came along. Though I was using IE 8, and it wasn't displaying correctly then either but never mind that. Why would there be, essentially, a check box for "Do you want to see this page all fucked up? []Yes []No"?

And then there's also the question of why this is happening in Firefox 6.0, which doesn't have (as far as I can find) a "compatibility view" to check or uncheck.

Seriously, I'm ready to look into just nuking Mercury.

mr_subjunctive said...

Oh, and --

it turns out that when "compatibility view" is on in IE 8, the header displays properly, but the results of the poll in this post don't. So apparently one can have the header or the poll but not both.

Anonymous said...

Love Sheba. Corn makes a nice background - but you said she doesn't like it. Why? Rustling? Whatever.
My screen shows your header just fine, but once in a while I get an error message "bad code, reload" and otherwise a blank screen. On the other hand my internet access comes in by goat path so anything can happen.

FundyBay

CelticRose said...

Weird. Compatibility mode is supposed to fix any problems that would make an old web page look funky in a new browser. But you're right: I switched off the automatic compatibility mode in IE9 and that fixed the problem with the header, but the poll results are slightly messed up.

I have Firefox 5 and the header looks fine in it. Maybe there's been an update in Firefox 6.0 that's causing a problem?

Anonymous said...

The image looks fine for me when using Firefox; when using Explorer, though it doesn't look right. It has the image at the center, but two big stripes the same color as the background on top and bottom of the square (being even on a bit of the title of PATSP). No idea how to fix it though, but hope this comment helps somehow...

Jenn said...

I'm using [whatever damn release FireFox is on, they're being coy and not giving them numbers anymore, asshats] and Win 7.

Looks like this for me:

http://gardendjinn.typepad.com/photo_repository/2011/08/my-entry.html