Blank white website? Please help! :(

[gthill2000]

Hello,

I am no pro at all making websites. I finally "completed" this website and was proud of myself: http://www.victoriaparkbrawley.com

Unfortunately, the webpage comes up as just a white background on about 1/3 of the computers I try to load it on. This is not good as our webpage is now being advertised and people are calling in saying they can't see anything.

I used Frontpage to create the site and added in some of the dynamic html scripts (i.e. image rollovers). Thats another thing, for example, try clicking on "directions" on the main page and leave your mouse in that spot(it is a rollover image link). The directions page will load but then when you move your cursor off of the "directions" gif button, it will be 'x'ed out.

Please I really need help and this was my first webpage job. If you feel its better to talk in person you can call me too (619) 507-9630 or you can respond in here. Thanks so much!!!

Garrett

[jscheuer1]

I tried in IE6, FF1.0.7 and Opera8.5 and couldn't get the blank page. In fact, things looked pretty nice! One suggestion would be to add preloading code to the page so that dial up users will get better results on the rollovers. That probably is the problem with the 'blank' page as well. The page loaded a bit slowly on my broadband connection (on dial up that could make the page appear blank for some time). Too many images, too large file sizes of the images, too much code and nested tables, can all contribute to this. I looked at the code after typing the above. Doesn't look like too much code and there were no tables. However, 'logo1.jpg' is 87,961 bytes. It could be made into a .png using 15 colors and weigh in at only 7,971 bytes (9.1% the original bandwidth, an image with no perceptible loss in quality and of the exact same dimensions). I wasn't even trying to make it as small as possible. Get a good image optimization program and learn how to use it. I like xat.com's image optimizer pro. I think DD even has a free online image optimizer but, I've never used it so, don't know if it can get the same sort of results. I just tested it, and converting it to .gif 32 colors seemed about the best it could do without losing quality - at 12,996 bytes, still a tremendous savings on bandwidth.

[gthill2000]

John,

Appreciate the great advice! I just don't understand what could be blocking the webpage from some computers. Even my desktop won't load it and it is a fairly new Dell.

[jscheuer1]

What kind of connection to the web does it have? Broadband or dialup? Another thing, what kind of firewall does it have? I've heard odd things about Norton firewalls sometimes blocking pages for silly reasons.

[Twey]

Utterly unrelated: specify a white background colour. It looks awful if the user has a different default background colour set. Also, the first line of this div:

	<div style="position: absolute; width: 792px; height: 205px; z-index: 1; left: -11px; top: 133px" id="layer12">
		<p align="center"><b><font face="Gautami" size="5" color="#023D79">time, 
		your means and your emotions.&nbsp; It is the place where you and your 
		loved ones form memories that will last a lifetime.&nbsp; We at Garrett 
		Development take pride in building the kind of home you will be proud to 
		share with those close to you. </font></b></div>

	<p align="center" style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</div>

overlaps the last line of the preceding paragraph for me in Firefox on /aboutus.html, as do a lot of the links on /park.html.

[gthill2000]

What kind of connection to the web does it have? Broadband or dialup? Another thing, what kind of firewall does it have? I've heard odd things about Norton firewalls sometimes blocking pages for silly reasons.

John,

This looks like it could be the issue! The computers in the office that I tested on do have Norton Internet Security. What could it be that Norton doesn't like??? Also, they are using broadband.

Thanks!

[gthill2000]

Utterly unrelated: specify a white background colour. It looks awful if the user has a different default background colour set. Also, the first line of this div:

	<div style="position: absolute; width: 792px; height: 205px; z-index: 1; left: -11px; top: 133px" id="layer12">
		<p align="center"><b><font face="Gautami" size="5" color="#023D79">time, 
		your means and your emotions.&nbsp; It is the place where you and your 
		loved ones form memories that will last a lifetime.&nbsp; We at Garrett 
		Development take pride in building the kind of home you will be proud to 
		share with those close to you. </font></b></div>

	<p align="center" style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</div>

overlaps the last line of the preceding paragraph for me in Firefox on /aboutus.html, as do a lot of the links on /park.html.

Twey,

How do I fix this overlapping if everything is aligned when viewing in internet explorer? I am using dragable layers in Frontpage which must not be a universally compatable fuction.

Thanks for the background tip!

[jscheuer1]

John,

This looks like it could be the issue! The computers in the office that I tested on do have Norton Internet Security. What could it be that Norton doesn't like??? Also, they are using broadband.

Thanks!

This thread is what made me think of this:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=4133

Try disabling the firewall or parts of it first to test this idea. Remember to re-enable it!

Another test you should make first, if you haven't already, is to try refreshing the page on these computers, just to see if that will make the page come up.

[Twey]

I believe that the problem is that you are using absolute positioning. Try using relative positioning instead.