You aren't using Vista by any chance?

Hmm.  I have just put up the site on Firefox and have to say the appearance is not as good as IE7!  The lettering looks a bit vague and rather as if it was done on a typewriter whereas on IE it is as clear as a bell.

That's the way it's supposed to look!

As well as nor rendering the font in the right size, or as desired, it also appends the external link graphic very poorly, then there's the various borders that are rendered in a different way than the styling requests, then there's the patch that has to be applied to make certain graphic function work at all, then...

Oh, alright. it's not that bad, but the important thing is that unlike Firefox, IE simply does not follow the standards set out by the World Wide Web Consortium, and we have to program fixes to make it work.

As for the Captain's wee test result...

The good news it confirms some code handling that might have been disabled in his browser is not disabled.

The bad news is another option is gone, and I can't really think of anything else sensible to suggest, so wish him luck in his hunt.

I get the impression when the cause is found it will be something fundamental and patently obvious, not seen because we're looking too hard

Is it just me ?



Every body of a post is like this........

Sorry Captain, it's just you and a side effect of your as yet undiscovered problem with your view

There's some fiddling going on at he moment, and the blue is used to show when we get the code wrong - for us. it appears in IE or Fx if we make a typo, but there's normally a shaded background - which you've probably never seen because it uses a graphic like the X'd images to the left in your clip.

I wish the cause of your odd behaviour was obvious - have you tried asking for help anywhere else?

It has to be some setting somewhere.

Have you got anything installed that could have automatically added this site to a blacklist that blocks images, because that's what's happening if you can see other images, which you clearly can since the pics of eg Dalmarnock, are not sourced from this url, but from a remote host, so have a different url.

I'll ditch the blue soon.

Dark blue should be gone now, and only the Captain will be seeing a pale blue-ish background now

I can't see it  having anything to do with the red Xs, which is a internet/web access problem somewhere, but the reminder about the width being ok in screenshot, but too wide on screen, hints at a possible driver problem.

If you know how and have the info, I'd try downloading the newest drivers for you video adapter - this applies for laptops or desktops, and should be straightforward. You only have to identify the card/adapter and then go the support section of the maker's web site. That should have the latest drivers available for download, and should have instructions provided too.

One other question sparked off by this...

In the screenshots which you mentioned above, obviously the width was ok, but you didn't mention if the graphics appeared in the screenshots as red Xs or as the proper images.

Can you remember this, or check again and let me know?

Yep, that's what I expected - right background too, but then again, it's just a colour and not a graphic, so no surprise there.

It might be worth working through the following notes - a few relate directly to IE and might be worth following through, just to be sure the options are set as needed to stop images being shows as Xs. Some of the others probably don't apply, but then again, I've learned not to dismiss anything to do with software problems out of hand, and I'd check them as well, just to be sure they weren't having an undocumented effect - it does happen!


Problem: The "Show Pictures" setting has been turned off in Internet Explorer.
Solution: In Internet Explorer's Tools menu, click Internet Options, then click the Advanced tab. Make sure the Show Pictures check box is selected under Multimedia, and click OK.

Problem: Your anti-virus or firewall is a little too uppity. Check to see if your anti-virus or firewall software has a privacy setting to "disable web bugs".
Solution: Uncheck or turn it off. (The term "web bug" is a misnomer. They are really just harmless tiny images on a web page or email, sometimes used for tracking purposes.)

Problem: Your Internet Explorer security settings are set too high, preventing you from accessing the web site which hosts the image.
Solution: Reset to the default security settings. In Internet Explorer, click on Tools -> Internet Options -> Security -> Default Level.

Problem: You've installed the Windows XP/SP2 updates and you're being bitten by the "Block images and other external content in HTML e-mail" security option. This is automatically turned ON in Outlook Express after you install Windows XP/SP2.
Solution: Click on Tools -> Options -> Security. Then UNCHECK the "Block images and other external content" check box, and click OK.

Well, it was worth a shot, and I did say not all might apply.

I've used the free version of AVG for years now, and have no complaints as it has done its job when required, and I just forget it's there and it all works completely automatically every day. It even downloads its own updates and new anti-virus files every day.

Apart from being free, the biggest recommendation for this is that it's home is Czechoslovakia - need I say more?

You're in luck, as the newest version AVG Anti-Virus Free 8.0 just hit the net a few days ago, and I'll be upgrading from 7.5 tonight.

Go get it from...

http://free.grisoft.com/

Where you'll also find a FAQ for instructions and information, and there also downloadable documentation.

While I may be a bit more savvy than most, I've never even looked at the documentation - just downloaded the file, ran it, and then played about with the setting until it worked the way I wanted and I could forget about it.

I know it's obvious, but just in case, Version 8 is the one to go for - 7.5 is history now.

AVG8 went in fine, and nothing naughty reported (yet).

The registration failed - whether that's because I already had version 7 registered I don't know, but it hasn't caused any problems. Maybe a clean install rather than upgrade will be different - obviously not something I can try!

One point worth making for a new user...

Once the initial install is complete, you will be advised to run the update option - do this.

It will immediately connect to the AVG site, download and install the newest version of the program and all the virus detection files after a few minutes.

Once you have played with it and found the 'Scheduler' you will find it defaults to a scan every day at 12:00 - providing the PC is on of course. I've never had any real problems, and eventually set this to happen only on one day per week. In reality, I finally set it to manual scan, and just run it if I think there is something amiss - never is though.

It's always running in the background and checking programs, downloads, email etc and will FLASH UP a bug on screen,  and alert as soon as you touch any of these that it thinks there is problem with, and let you decide what should be done next.

The Captain's not the only with oddities on his PC.

For over a year now, I've been driven up the wall at startup (or worse still, reboot) times, ever since my PC decided to spend somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes grinding and grating the hard drive every time this was done.

The thing is useless while this is going on, as anything started would have to be read from the hard drive, and that was busy doing its own thing, so if anything could be persuaded to start, it just crawled along, probably slowing things down even more.

Despite launching all sorts of investigative and reporting programs to see what was happening at startup, nothing odd was ever seen or reported, and I just gave up.

A chance posting on another forum provided the answer, and after months of pointless searching learned that I couldn't find anything wrong because... nothing was wrong.

Although I never use it, Windows has always had a scheduler built in. Usually I delete or disable it, but found that it had become configured to run a hard disk test at every startup - certainly not by me is all I can say. I can only guess it was called up as part of some some installation way back in the mists of time, and the code was either badly written, and didn't delete the task once it was completed, or more likely, the computer crashed, and that part of the process was never completed.

Either way, the scheduler has been killed now, and I now I get use my PC a few minutes after starting it, which is a new luxury

Maybe they'll put programs in memory some day, and we can go back to the good old bad old days of computing, when you turned on your primitive box with a few kb of memory, and started using it within a few seconds

I'm glad to hear it...

I think we'd all be gladder if we knew why...

But then again, we don't want to make fuss either, just in case...

I wonder if the Favourites route was the cause of your problem.  Did it contain and out of date or corrupted url?  I always type www.sec and click on the bar underneath with the full url I want.  

That's a distinct possibility - the earliest urls before the domain was fully established did not have www at the beginning. If that version is used, it will get you to the site, but bits will be broken.

In future, it might be worth mentioning the route used to get to the site if there are any more problems like this.

As far as I know, all the links have been revised over time, but that doesn't mean there are old ones I've forgotten about that are buried away in dark corner, and of course, I can't do anything about people's personal bookmarked links or favourites. They have to check them themselves every so often, in case there have been changes.