Calling all Firefox users

[annathepiper]

Need somebody to look at a URL for me and verify that the layout is not completely haywire. If you're running Firefox 1.5 (any sub-version thereof) on a PC, please to fling your browser here to this publically viewable page on the NWsource site, and tell me whether you see any hugely obvious screwed up layout problems?

We had an issue reported with this page being completely munged in that browser, and I'm not reproing it on Firefox on my own system, but I'm also internal to our network. So if y'all can check this for me, I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks!

ETA 10:46am: Looks like the problem is confirmed to not have escaped into the wild. We're good. Thanks to those of you who chimed in with your findings!

Comments

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Looks fine from here (firefox on win2k, I don't know the incantation to tell me which release). There's an ad atthe bottom of the second column that causes a bunch of random whitespace in the bottom of the first column, but nothing serious.

[annathepiper]

Okay cool, thanks for chiming in! The issue we saw was a hugely obvious screwing up of the layout with controls scattered all over the place, and a header reading "Seattle Newspaper Ads" showing up that wasn't actually supposed to be there. If you're not seeing that, we're good. :)

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

Looks fine for me (FF 1.0.4 on Win2k). Looks the same as it does on IE6 on the same system.

[kent.livejournal.com]

Looks fine to me (http://pics.livejournal.com/kent/pic/0002774f/g58) (Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Windows XP SP2).

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

looks all right on IE 6.0

[annathepiper]

Sweet, thanks. :)

[annathepiper]

Cool, thank you very much. 1.5.0.4 on XPSP2 is what I've got for my work box, so it's good to know an external box matching the same description is seeing the same stuff I am. :)

[annathepiper]

Thanks. :)

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

A sort of blind suggestion:

Ask the person with the issue to send you a screen shot of the problem. It might suggest what the issue may be. I'm presuming you've already done DTD and other forms of validation on the source (including CSS) - violations of spec are often responsible for the weird stuff.

Given that it's firefox, it might also be a plugin. If there's a way to dump that sort of thing, that might also may be good to know.

[annathepiper]

Oh, we have a screenshot, which is how I know that the symptom was "the layout is completely and utterly screwed"--elements of the content were scattered all over the place. :)

I haven't done source validation on the page yet, but I had thought of that, yeah. Our current operating theory though is that one of our ads, which are dynamic content that rotate out fairly often, might have screwed up the page layout. I haven't seen that specific ad come up on the page the many times I've been hitting Refresh, which may be why I haven't been able to repro the problem.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Bad ads can be a right royal pain in the keister. That's why I'm a big fan of having (a) a way to bring up a given ad that's not publicly known and (b) keeping ads either on the same server that's serving the rest of the content or some third-party place, either way a place that's not accessible to the content provider post-submission. Lot of trojans get placed that way...

I'm seeing that the "newspaper inserts" tab is transparently overlaying the Search box's label but other than that it looks fine. Firefox 1.0.7 on Red Hat Enterprise 4.3.

[baavgai.livejournal.com]

If, like me, you have Javascript disabled by default you see... squat.

Really, no content other than tab bars. Suspecting there was more to it, I allowed scripts for that page; then it looks fine.

The Firefox NoScript (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/) extension is my favorite tool. It's also a top download, so you can assume many people could fail the same way I did.

You could put a "you need scipting enable to view this page" tag visible in the page and then turn it off with a script on load. That way they know to allow scripts for the page.

[lyricae.livejournal.com]

I don't know what version of Firefox I'm using, but it looks fine on mine. Running firefox on Win XP Pro.

[annathepiper]

Cool, thank you for checking! :)

[annathepiper]

I'll be real surprised if this scenario has actually occurred to any of the devs. Since I'm New Girl, I don't know for sure yet. But I'll see if I can at least get it onto the internal radar. Thanks for the heads up!

[annathepiper]

Thanks for chiming in! And hrmm, I have yet to learn the mojo of our virtual machines on one of our QA boxen here--but one of those VMs is Linux, so I'll have to see if I can repro the problem with the overlay there.