Printer-friendly version
Author:
Taxonomy upgrade extras:
Is there anyone out there who knows how to get rid of the black rectangle/black box that overlaps the stories? It happens with firefox, i've seen it on multiple machines, and have had the problem on both xp and vista.
It's not selectable, i can get to the text beneath by copy pasting it, but it detracts from an otherwise very good reading experience.
Love,
Amber 
Comments
Can you post a screenshot of
Can you post a screenshot of what you are talking about? I'm not understanding what you are talking about.
----------------------------
May the Stars light your path.
Joy
I Haven't Had A Problem With It
I have Firefox and I haven't had a problem with it. I did have a problem with a small box popping up in the upper left corner and I just hit the "X" and closed it out. It just started after I upgraded to the newest version, but it hasn't been a problem since. Maybe you should click on "tools" at the top of the page and check your settings if it doesn't go away? Hope that this helps.
Hugs,
Jen
Add-ons?
Do you use any Add-ons, like NoScript or Adblock? What OS (Windows, Linux, Apple, etc.) are you using as there are some things that are different based on the OS you are using?
Arwen
Mine Does It Too (Update)
The black box goes away for me if I move my mouse over to the scroll down bar on the right hand edge of the browser. I have to hover the pointer over the up or down arrow or the scroll tab. I don't have to click anything (just move the mouse over one of the three buttons). I recommend that you see if that works for you too. It was a pain before I happened on the solution I've described.
Hope it works for you too.
I've never seen it on a Mac...
...but I also run Adblock Plus, which pretty much eliminates popups, and which is what your black box *sounds* like.
You might also try fiddling with the "style sheet" associated with the page, as an experiment. It should be a selection under the "View" menu item called "Page Style". Choose "No Style". You can change it back later using the other option, "Basic Page Style". These are obscure and "artsy" or "User-Friendly" references to perfectly ordinary and standard "Cascading Style Sheets" terminology, which you can find out about by searching on the phrase.
I'd try posting a screen shot, as suggested by another respondent, so people who *don't* have the problem can see what's happening.
In general, people who know how to fix things, or at least explain what's going wrong, are unlikely to have a continuing experience of most specific problems with solutions, and may not even have seen them in the past, through some prophylactic intervention from the start.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Graphics issue
I believe what you're referring to is a graphics issue related to either the display adapter or system memory. It doesn't have anything to do with the browser, I've had it happen in both IE and Firefox on my old computer; it's like the system is leaving out a piece of the image. Usually it would disappear for me if I scrolled past it and then back, or refreshed the screen, but sometimes it defied all efforts to get rid of it short of rebooting. I stopped having the problem when I got my new computer.
Scott
-- Moliere
Bree
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
-- Tom Clancy
http://genomorph.tglibrary.com/ (Currently broken)
http://bree-ramsey314.livejournal.com/
Twitter: @genomorph
As i mentioned in the post,
As i mentioned in the post, it happened on both vista and xp. Only addon installed is stumbleupon. (well, was, as a possible solution i did just install an addblocker)
It seems to happen only in longer stories, but i'm not able to reproduce it right now. Soon as it happens again i'll attach a screenie.
thanks for the help so far, and i'll be sure to try that workaround
Love,
Amber
The block exists
There are a few longer stories it happens on for me. I have an XP x64 dual Pentium with a 7300 Nvidia with (until very recently) an up to date driver and 3G ram, so I don't think it's the computer. I use Firefox. I just checked opened one of the stories I remembered it coming up on before, years ago, and it was still there, a few incarnations of Firefox later. The "trick" another poster used to get rid of it, by using the scroll bar, to my amazement, worked.
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
Sounds like a graphics driver x Firefox graphics cache problem
A permanent solution might involve a lot of work and trial and error.
It's possible Firefox is calling something with bad parameters while drawing the screen. FF has a bad habit of dropping small pieces of HTML (certain sorts of commands involving page formatting) during big page loads and BC's home page is large and complex.
The dropped code can corrupt an area of the screen, usually seen as a multicolored narrow bar running across the browser window on Macs. It can also be a rectangular single color block, usually black and anchored on the left edge of the screen, on PCs. I've seen red, green, blue and yellow blocks, too and areas where the image is rotated 90 degrees. Some of these happen with other browsers, too.
The problem may be the browser's handling of commands for the graphics cache, the sort of subtle and wily insect capable of making strong programmers shriek with frustration.
The scroll bar trick often solves the problem until the next complete page reload. I may be able to reduce the frequency of the occurrence of this problem with some tweaking of the home page, and/or a new theme. That will take time and no promises when I can get to it.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Thanks Erin - This One is Likely Not Worth Your Time
It's never done it to me on the home page. Only on long story's (ie: Jennifer Brock's Ready, Ok!). it's pretty easy just to move the mouse.
I've taken a screen shot and will try to post it from Flickr:
Yep
That's what it looks like. I have to agree: I've seen this on other sites, it happens rarely, and a touch on the scroll bar kills it, so I wouldn't even bother trying to fix it.
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
Okay, to me this looks like
Okay, to me this looks like it is a banner ad that is misplaced on the page. Looking at the bottom where "scripts are partially allowed" says that the iframe of the banner is allowed, but the actual content of that iframe isn't, thus giving you a black box in a wrong area.
My suggestion is to download and install AdBlock for Firefox, an extension. I have it running on my PC and I don't have any problems with things like that. To compensate for the lost revenues for BC and TS, I donate money when I can.
----------------------------
May the Stars light your path.
Joy
That's probably it
Iframes are not handled well by many browsers since they are obsolete technology which some ad folks continue to use.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
GFX Board problem
This isn't an HTML problem, since an entire section of the screen is invisible, and letters are sliced quite neatly.
An HTML reading error would have missing words, or garbled words, but not a hole in the screen.
Somewhow, a portion of your screen memory isn't being written correctly, and scrolling up and down reloads the screen image from cache, so the hole "disappears."
It *could* be that your processor is overloaded, so cycles are being dropped. You might try unloading any programs running simultaneously, or saving the the entire page to disk and then restarting in "Safe Mode" and loading the saved page ofline.
If you have a diagnostic programme, you might try that as well.
Since it "goes away," it seems unlikely to be a hard error, but some sort of transient caused externally.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Firefox issue
It's not an overloaded processor or a lack of memory. I have a fairly decent computer I bought for the graphics, and I haven't managed to overload it yet. I just tried viewing the same story a couple of times in Explorer, and the problem, repeatable in Firefox, didn't occur. The Nvidia drivers are up to date, and so that isn't it, either.
Just bringing the mouse curser over the marker on the scroll bar clears the black box. It's not even necessary to click. Strange problem. I refuse to worry about it. :)
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
In my case, it occurs on 3
In my case, it occurs on 3 different computers with 3 different types of video. It occurs rarely on other sites (and yes, I've seen the bad partially blocked pop-up ad problem with various versions of FF). It occurs on different versions of WinXP and Vista. It occurs with many tabs open in FF, and only 1 or 2 tabs open.
I've not tried just hovering the curser over the scroll bar or buttons. When I've used the scroll bar or scroll buttons, (click or click & drag) it didn't make a difference. That is, scrolling the page up or down didn't make the black box go away.
As Erin, said, I figured it was a mal-formed ad and just muttered under my breath & copied the paragraph or 3 into a notepad window to read it...
Janice
Anti Virus hiccup?
According to the little icon on the far right of the statusbar the related application is causing the blackboxthingie. The line above tells: 'Scripts partially allowed.' Whether it is from the use of an iframe or some other arbitrary script code it encountered is up for discussion but I'd say rather irrelevant. Whatever is was, the app -indicated by the icon- blocked it.
I notice you use McAfee as well as Norton, maybe they clash with each other. Or maybe the virusdatabase(s) are not up to par? You could also consider switching Norton & McAfee for AVG which is free for noncommercial use. Or... which is rather daunting, go for one of the many flavours of Linux. :)
Just thought I'd add € 0.02
Jo-Anne
Thanks For Your Comments
I'm running NoScript which allows me to selectively decide whether to run scripts on a given page or not. It's possible that it is part if not all of the problem. I haven't worried too much about it as the workaround is pretty easy.
I'm only running Norton Anti-Virus (360 actually). The McAfee that you see is SiteAdvisor. It's a free service that McAfee offers that rates websites for safety based on research that McAfee does. The Finjan does basically the same thing. The information shows up in search results as well as at the bottom of the page. It's pretty useful and free.
Among the things I love about this site is that so many people want to help with all sorts of problems, both large and small. I dove into this thread early because I thought I could help Amber-Willow with the work around that I had stumbled on. Then others commented (with both technical and non-technical observations) and I was pulled in to providing additional information throughout the day. It's not unusual that blogs take on a life of their own (sometimes way beyond the original question) because so many people want to help. I think it's wonderful.
Perhaps this question and thred should be forwarded??
My knowledge of computers is now more than a bit dated, and I also suffer the dreaded black box however could you forward your question and the resulting comments to Mozilla, their support website starts at http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/