Monday, February 4, 2008

In Working Order

Kyle brought it to my attention that some of the pages on my site were simply showing up black with no content, particularly those in the Voices section. I checked it out and it seemed fine, so I figured it must have been a problem with the computer he was using. By chance a day or so later I was checking out the site in Internet Explorer and I saw what he was talking about. Apparently whatever the problem was it was only affecting IE.

I use Firefox as my browser because it’s much better than IE on all fronts, especially in terms of security (protection from spyware and all that) which is very important. But I always make sure to check out if my site is working on as many browsers and platforms as I can, because different set-ups always read sites differently. I had made one minor change to my site recently, so I knew that must be the culprit that was making pages show up blank. See the image at the bottom of every page that shows a character sitting in a chair? I added code to set those images on a randomizer, meaning that every time a page loads you'll see a different image of someone sitting in that chair. It seemed to work fine, so I didn't think to check it in all browsers, and I certainly didn't think it would render pages unviewable.

At any rate, it's fixed now, but if anyone notices something displaying a little screwy please let me know. It's impossible for me to check how these pages will display on every combination of setups.

Also, if you're not already, start using Firefox. 90% of the time when somebody asks me to look at their computer because it's on the fritz, it's a spyware problem. Once the spyware is gone I download Firefiox, tell them to always use it for browsing, and none of them ever have a problem with it again. Of course Microsoft has been making more of an effort against Spyware lately, (Windows Defender is the best anti-spyware software you'll find for PC's) and it's been so long since I've used IE this may not be an issue anymore. But you know that awesome tabbed browsing that all new versions of IE have? Yeah, that was Firefox's idea.

On the update front, I added some Hellboy cursors I made to the voices section. I've wanted to put those up for a while now, so anybody who wants them can use them.


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