I had to have a fiddle about with the appearance of the Forum - the calm baby blue of what colour there was in the default was beginning to get to me, and not inspiring.

Since the old grey was too, well, er, um, grey, I decided to lift some of the formatting from the Blog scheme. I quite like its cool (as in colour temperature NOT as in YoofSpeak 'kewl') appearance, and it seems to work without obscuring any text, or doing any real damage to readability (I don't pander to impaired activists, but I do care about anyone that may be impaired, and don't make anything intentionally awkward). There's also the small, but highly relevant aspect that I can tweak the Forum to match the Blog, but not vice versa.

I think it's largely acceptable, I don't want to do too much fiddling, with a view to future upgrades, so there's only likely to be minor pottering around any details that pop up with odd appearances later on.

If anything is problematic, unreadable, invisible or whatever, do drop a note to alert.

Sorry, but the old psycho  OOPS  psyghic chip not as good as it used to be, so not sure what you might be seeing that we're not.

Far as I can recall, nothing has changed since Christmas or before (and the Great Forum Disaster of 200 so...

Any chance of a screen dump of what you're seeing that's not causing the rest of the world (since there's no other hints and it all looks fine to me)?

Red X's means your browser is being barred from downloading images, but it must be something with your browser setting, firewall (if you have one) or even ISP - since we are all using the same, either IE or Firefox presumably.

Do make sure all caches are flushed clean since you haven't visited for a while, red X's can mean it is trying to use out of date page info from the cache.

Ctrl or Shift F5 should force that, or go into Options and look for the option to clear/delete the cache.

And another thing ...........       The clock (like the one in my car) on the site is still on GMT but thats awright with me, as I don't believe we should have to read 19 pages of a manual to put a clock an hour forward.



And a big welcome to the new members.

I should add that the forum won't go down to 800x600 if that is the video or window size your desktop works at.

I used to work to this smaller size, but the default formatting is now 1024x768 and it's just another 'fudge too far' to fiddle with the stuff in the box to go against the flow and change the styling. Every time the code is upgraded, it means going through all the same changes again.

It's a losing battle anyway, with all the LCD and widescreen monitors around now, and only a small number of visitors are reported to be using the size now. I didn't think anyone might still be using it, so didn't think of it when you first mentioned what you saw, but a screen dump would have showed it.

Clock's a pain in the butt, but I've altered the GMT offset to suit. I'm surprised, as I was sure it was correct. I probably forgot about it, as I only added the time to the top of the page around the time the clocks moved, I think.

The Forum isn't automatic, but it's in the ToDo list for future modifications.

I have actually programmed the Main Site to change over automatically, and it worked last year, but I see that the hour shift never appeared from last autumn to spring, so the function may not be 100% reliable.

I didn't bother looking into it, as the hour doesn't really make a difference for edits - it's obvious of you happen to look, and is more important that it be consistent.

If it is any help when the forum first loads it appears to be in wide screen format and quickly shuffles itself into 4 by 3.   I did have the problem you describe for about a day a few weeks ago but decided that work was going on with the oily bits so ignored it and it went  away.

My car clock stays on BST, I bought it in that time of the year and never bothered to learn how to change it. Life is so complicated these days.

The wide-to-normal is just the browser responding to the styling of the page.

First time it appears, it doesn't know how to display any page, then it reads (and more importantly, temporarily stores) the styling info that controls the appearance, so the jump won't happen again, unless you leave the page/site, after which the info gets replaced by that for the next one you visit, and so on.

If the Captain is getting Red Xs for images, I suspect the same setting or issue on the Desktop is causing this, as the style info has to be read from a similar source as those Forum images. If something's amiss, and the Desktop can't read or access them, then all the forum graphics will fail to appear, and show as Red Xs, and the styling could fail too.

Try visiting the following address, and let me know if you get a page of text/code, or if you get a warning message telling you can't access it or something similar...

http://www.secretscotland.org.uk//blahdocs/template/SSX2/template.css

Another question: posts can be edited for up to a week after they're made. Captain, if you hover your mouse over the Modify option that appears to the top right corner of posts you have made within the last week, does a little option box appear under it?

I know the feeling Fox. I'm also a radio ham, and we don't use anything else but GMT (or UTC these days) on air!

I get the page of text/code.

When I clicked on the discussion link on the Comet page I experienced the same symptoms as The Captain.  Script going off the screen and graphics becoming red Xs!  Having now entered the Forum through the front door as it were, all is well and the appearance and performance normal.

Trust the wily Fox to provide the solution

There are a few malformed links floating around from the early days, and these will cause the problems reported if you happen to come across them. The domain is configured to deliver you to the right place, but it can't do anything about addresses that depend on where you are to find information that lives below it, as it were.

In this case, the old problem links that you will come across look/begin like this:

http://secrertscotland.org.uk/

This will work fine, in that it will deliver the page, but not the related stuff that the browser should be able to find below it.

The proper links look/begin (not surprisingly) like this:

http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/

I haven't tripped over one of the old 'naughty' ones for ages, and had hoped they were all gone, so if you come across any, please to drop a note somewhere, so I can kill/fix them.

Sorry about that, I thought they had all been swept up.

If it's any consolation, I was as puzzled as you when this first kicked in at the end of last year, and only spotted the old links as the cause after some weeks of head scratching, as it appeared to appear at random.

There's probably a clever fix to handle it, and make it go away, but I'd rather have all the links properly formed, so probably wouldn't use it even if I knew how.

Glad to be of assistance.

All the offenders (that can be trapped by a search at least) have now been eliminated.

If you have any Shortcuts or Bookmarks to any SeSco pages, either from the Main Site or this Forum, you should check their Properties and ensure that they are formed with the full www url/address, rather than the shortform option which omits it, otherwise you will have the odd behaviour appear whenever you use the Bookmark rather than typing in the address, or clicking a site link.

This is most odd.

Can you feedback the result of the two tests given in Reply: 8 above please.

From what you describe, it sounds as if there may be some sort of image-blocking going on, suggested by the screenshot - what are you using to take the shot?

Are you able to report on what you see using both Firefox and IE7, as this would give some more clues.

Ah! "don't use firefox"... now we know what's wrong

Seriously though, if you're getting the text displayed on that link, then there's nothing wrong with your access.

What about the result of hovering over the 'Modify' button on one of your recent messages?

I should perhaps add, just in case anyone thinks I'm not checking, I am actually typing this reply in IE7, and all is well - to the server, there's (almost) no difference between me and any other punter having a browse around here, so the problem's very, very unlikely to be at that end of things, or everyone would be seeing the same.

At this stage, I have to say I've not really got any sensible suggestions or hints left in my box of goodies. I've even just tried mucking about with the more obscure image setting and similar in IE7, but they just produced the results I expected, and none of them show red Xs.

While it's not the cause, I recall the Desktop was acquired relatively recently. Can you remind me of the version of Windows and confirm IE7 is in use?

I'd personally now  suggest throwing in Firefox for comparison. SeSco also looks much neater in it because it handles the styling better than IE, which has too many flaws and ignores some of the rules altogether.

It's all very odd, and I'm wondering about any forgotten anti-virus software (now out of date and mis-behaving), or the same with some firewall or similar tucked away somewhere. It all very much as if something was getting in the way.

Does the same happen on other sites, or is it restricted only to SeSco?