If you have MT, you know there is this cool thingy where you can get the comments that are posted to your blog emailed to you. If the poster leaves a valid email address you can reply privately to their comment if you want. (It's also handy to let you know when a porn spammer has hit an old archived post, but that's not the point today).
So, last night I had a comment I wanted to respond to privately, so I headed over to check my email. Hmmm...no notifications, despite a couple of new comments. Oh, well, maybe the mail's slow. Check again in the morning...
Yep! There's the comments...okay. Um, wait. One's missing. Where's the comment I wanted to reply to? Hmmm...check the blog. Yep! There's the comment--I didn't dream it.
Well, it's a little more work, but I'll just go to his blog and get his email address...which I can't seem to find. Hmm. Now what? Leave a message in his comments that's completely off topic? It's not like this is an emergency or anything....
Reply in my comments? What if he never comes back to read it?
Last resort then--blog a reply.
So, in the comments to this post,
Michael Williams said:
Thanks for the link!You may also want to check out this post which will tell you how to fix your display problems (the diappearing text and such).
Posted by Michael Williams at October 30, 2003 06:03 AM
Now, being as non-geek as it is possible to be and still be able to type, I am always grateful for MT help. But here's the thing, and maybe it's a petty quibble but I'm in that kind of mood today: I don't have any display problems.
My blog shows up just fine in IE 5.5 and Mozilla. Heck, except for a little problem with the calendar, it even displays great in Netscape 6.1. So Michael's comment strikes me as a little, well, curt.
It's almost like an aquaintance walking up to you at a party and saying: "I can get you a discount to fix that dent in your car."
What dent in my car???????
Only that's a poor analogy, because it would have to be a dent that he sees and you don't--but the same thing goes for the plastic-surgeon-offering-you-a-nose-job analogy so I'm struggling here.
Anyway, Michael, I am sorry you were having display problems when visiting my blog. Since I don't have those problems, I don't know what you mean by "disappearing text and such". What browser are you using? Why hasn't anyone else ever mentioned a problem? IS anyone else having a problem?
According to eXtreme tracking 64.63% of my visitors use MSIE 6, and 23.95% use MSIE 5. There are even a few visitors that use MSIE 4 and 3. So if the 88.94% of visitors who use IE are having display problems, why haven't any of them mentioned it?
So, gentle readers--Are you having display problems? And do I have to do this:
Go through your CSS and eliminate every "position: absolute" attribute, and your problem will be solved. It looks like IE doesn't like large floaters.You'll probably do well to replace the "position: absolute" attributes with "position: relative", and then use tables to lay out your page. Replace every <div id=???> tag with <td id=???> and the appropriate table and rows, and you should be fine. Yes, using tables is cheating, but if IE doesn't want to play nice then there really isn't another option.
I don't even know how to "use tables".....Waaaaah!!!!!!!
And Michael, please--when you see someone hideously ugly on the street, it's really not nice to tell them that straight out, like Basil Fawlty's "My God, you're ugly!". You should always lead into it a little more gently, like "You know, I used to have a hairlip and a nose like Karl Malden's too. Would you like the name of my platic surgeon?"
I'm pretty sure I left my email address on my last post :) The disappearing text issues with the default MT templates are pretty well known, so I thought you'd be aware of them anyway. I pulled my hair out for a week or so trying to get mine resolved.
Mozilla won't show the display problems, but you should be able to see them in IE, with just about any version. It doesn't render floating divs properly, and so sometimes text gets hidden and unhidden when you scroll or highlight it. Strangely though, some people seem to never notice it; it took me a while to even figure out it was happening.
It's not a problem specific to your blog, it's something that all MT blogs have issues with. Sorry to have been so blunt about it though!
Posted by: Michael Williams at October 30, 2003 06:23 PMOne way you can see it clearly is to go to your main page, and click in the blog area on some text that's above the bottom edge of your left sidebar. Then drag your cursor down to highlight as much text as possible. You won't be able to highlight down (in the main area) past the bottom edge of the sidebar. This is the result of the same floating divs that cause the display problems.
Posted by: Michael Williams at October 30, 2003 06:26 PMThe only problem I have with the display is one I seem to have with most MT left-column sidebar blogs...the text in the content starts out narrow, then widens if I hit, say, the "comments" link. Then I have to scroll back to the point I left off at.
So I just keep my sidebar to the right on mine. :-)
Posted by: Jennifer at October 30, 2003 08:46 PMI had several folks tell me they couldn't see my sidebar. I tried all the fixes suggested, but none worked. No one's mentioned the problem lately, so it either fixed itself, or some readers don't know it's missing :)
Posted by: Ith at October 30, 2003 09:42 PMJust FYI...
Microsoft has posted IE 6 as a "Critical Update" for Windows, since they no longer release security patched for anything less.
To update your computer, visit:
http://www.windowsupdate.com
Allow the site to install the auto-update feature, scan your installation status, and make recommendations. Then download and install all the Critical Updates.
I do recommend you empty your internet cache and perform a Scandisk and Disk Defragmentation BEFORE you begin any of this, however, if you haven't recently. If you don't know how to do this, then learn first.
So, UPDATE!
Or, you could always just leave your computer vulnerable to hackers instead. That might be fun, too.
PK
Posted by: PK at October 30, 2003 11:04 PMMy only issue is the one Jennifer mentioned (though I never noticed that it was only on blogs with the sidebar on the right).
The posts are in a narrow column pretty much down the center. The sidebar is on the right, and there is nothing down the left side (maybe 25% of the screen).
When I click on a link or on the Comments, the posts expand from the original right margin all the way to the left. This, of course, means that each post takes up less vertical space, and, if it's a post from further down the page, I have to scroll up to where I clicked and click it again.
If I click on a Comments, like now, and then enter the comment and close the window, the posts are still stretched all the way to the left.
But if I click on a link, and then Back into Practical Penumbra (or any other mu.nu blog that has this same characteristic) then the posts are once again in a narrow column.
Sometimes they actually flicker back and forth for some reason, from narrow to wide. That get's a tad annoying.
I suppose, as Jen said, if you put the sidebar on the right that curious feature would disappear.
Posted by: Tuning Spork at October 31, 2003 12:33 AMI do what Michael did, too, Susie. It's the inner geek just wanting to help.
Browsers plague us - I purposefully have a really old version of IE at work and another old version of IE at home to try to catch all that I can in my commercial software.
hln
Posted by: hln at October 31, 2003 03:32 AMThe reason I have my sidebar on the left is my IE browser doesn't like to display the RIGHT side ones--they all appear at the bottom underneath all the posts. Mozilla doesn't have that problem, however. I can even read three column blogs with Mozilla. Whoo Hoo! Thanks, Pixy Misa!
Posted by: Susie at October 31, 2003 04:10 PMI am a comment spammer and my IP is 217.26.240.61
Posted by: Viagra at November 10, 2003 01:38 PMWith love comes strange currencies.
Posted by: Traill Stacie at January 10, 2004 12:05 AM