Can't view pics on one particular site, maybe because of an unknown 'security feature'

My system is a Dell Dimension 8400 with WinXP. One particular website
has photographs on it that simply do not show up on either of my
browsers, FireFox and IE.

The web page is at:

http://www.breezynews.com

My browser changes it to:

http://www.breezynews.com/cgi-bin/weather/hamweather.cgi

The site's pics show up fine on my friends' computers, both Windows
and Mac. I myself have never had any problem viewing photos on any
sites before, that I'm aware of. The company that runs the site told
me that the problem is:

"because of a security feature you have active. We have not heard of
any one else having any issues with the pictures."

I'm not aware of any "security feature". Can someone suggest what
might be going on, and a solution, please?

Thanks.

 

Do you mean your FF & IE do not show the pics associated with the
articles, such as

http://www.breezynews.com/banners2/breezynews.jpg
http://www.breezynews.com/banners2/kpd.jpg
http://www.breezynews.com/banners2/acfd_truck2.jpg
http://www.breezynews.com/banners2/buff.jpg
http://www.breezynews.com/banners2/breezy101live.jpg
http://www.breezynews.com/banners2/breezynews.jpg
http://www.breezynews.com/banners2/pillow.jpg
http://www.breezynews.com/banners2/breezy101live.jpg

What happens if you click those URLs or put each into a browser's
addressline?

The page uses css and javascript, but .js is not needed to display the
pics. The .js is to help the ads display.

 

I get the same results with Firefox. Rather than the pics, I have nothing
but a blue bar alongside the right of the screen. It's actually preferable
to all the garbage many news sites line their pages with.

I'll bet if you verified that site, you'd find a few hundred coding errors.
I'd do it myself, but don't have time right now.

 

If I click any of these URLs, the image does indeed open in FireFox
(my default browser). If each is pasted into FF's addressline, the pic
shows up OK that method, also.

Thanks for your help. What next?

 

I also get that vertical blue bar on the right side of the screen. The
pics show up more toward the left, adjacent to news articles. A
picture or two will show up on my PC, but there are always several
pics that will not.

I'm still trying to figure out what the problem is with that web page,
so yes, I'd like to verify that site. What does "verify" mean, and how
do I do it?

 

See <http://validator.w3.org/> - which for the page you mention, reports:

Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 203 it
contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other
words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character
Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character
encoding indication.

The error was: utf8 "\xB0" does not map to Unicode

which is not a good start!

Try viewing the site with Opera, in 'user mode'.

 

Hello Whiskers,

From interest I just tried a web site I edit - http://www.wroxton.org.uk on
the validator site you mention. It has come up with 9 errors though as far
as I am aware it runs OK. As you obviously know about these things, can you
advise me as to whether or not I need to do anything? It was written with
Serif Web Plus.

Richard Woollacott

 

Don't you mean: http://www.balscote.org.uk/
Why the frames redirection?

Please lose the music. I was listening to a nice mellow jazz CD when I
clicked your link, and you interrupted it. Not good for people listening
late at night with the children sleeping in the next room. If you really
want music, place a link or button so the visitor has choice.

There appears to be a JavaScript menu. That is inaccessible for the ~10%
who have JavaScript disabled or stripped by a corporate firewall, and is
like turning off your web server for a month each year.

You use ActiveX objects. Only Internet Exploder users will see that,
unless they are smart and have disabled those insecure objects.

You use tonnes of inline styling. Use a CSS style sheet instead.

You need to update your font sizing to the 21st century. See:
http://k75s.home.att.net/fontsize.html
and switch to percentages, and drop Verdana.

Red-on-yellow is not a colour combination I would have chosen.

It appears that "Serif WebPlus" generates last-century-style HTML. Why
not upgrade to something more modern? This fork of the Mozilla Composer
is supposed to be quite good for amateurs:
http://kompozer.net/

I personally compose all web pages with a good text editor...

You could post in alt.html for more detailed questions.

 

The site works fine for me using IE7.

--

Newsgroup Trolls. Read about mine here http://www.pcbutts1.com/downloads
The list grows. Leythos the stalker http://www.leythosthestalker.com, David
H. Lipman, Max M Wachtell III aka What's in a Name?, Fitz, Beauregard T.
Shagnasty,Rhonda Lea Kirk, Meat Plow, F Kwatu F, George Orwell

 

Strange; it reports 23 when I do that.

I'm no expert!

I'd have thought that any error was worth fixing, once it has been
identified. Different browsers react to errors differently.

 

I have 'enable sound in web pages' un-selected in Opera; well worth doing!

Good idea )

I'd try to drop the Java applet too; it doesn't really add anything to the
content that couldn't be done in a way that would work with even a
text-only browser.

If you can't see the images, the site is impossible to navigate - with or
without 'javascript'.

My browser (Opera, on Linux) resorts to 'quirks mode' to render the page.

 

And a programmer would know that IE does not follow W3 Standards, it
will allow broken HTML to work without generating an error.

--

Leythos - (remove 999 to email me)

Fight exposing kids to porn, complain about sites like PCBUTTS 1.COM
that create filth and put it on the web for any kid to see: Just take a
look at some of the FILTH he's created and put on his website:
http://forums.speedguide.net/archive/index.php/t-223485.html all exposed
to children (the link I've include does not directly display his filth).
You can find the same information by googling for 'PCBUTTS1' and
'exposed to kids'.

 

Well Beauregard T. Shagnasty I thought I was asking for technical help
rather than aesthetic criticism even from an expert like you. Can we have
the URL of one of the sites you have created so that we can see how it
should be done.

I am surprised though that you did not understand that the Wroxton and
Balscote thing is because as you can see, the Parish council covers two
villages and for both political and search engine reasons it is two linked
URL addresses. By the way, ActiveX comes up perfectly in Firefox.

Richard

 

Well ok, but Usenet is not a help desk; it is discussion groups. I
though you would be interested in some constructive criticism.

If you wish.
http://countryrode.com/

Sure I understand what you are doing; I was questioning the method by
which you did it. Frames redirection takes away the ability for your
visitors to bookmark a page they find interesting.

For example, after going to http://www.wroxton.org.uk/ and clicking
around a bit, I found a page about antique furniture:

"Diana Marcovitch and Madeleine Stead of Balscote " ...

and I would like to bookmark it for future reference. But look in your
location bar. I cannot bookmark that page.

The page is actually: http://www.balscote.org.uk/page18.html
When I am ready to purchase that furniture, I am going to have to go
through the process all over again to try to find that page. A less-than
astute surfer may not remember what s/he did.

You either need to do a straight redirection with some code in the
wroxton.co.uk main page (like this PHP example):

<?php
header( "Location: http://www.balscote.org.uk/index.html" )
?>

or use your domain registrar to do a pure non-framed forward to
balscote.co.uk or use an .htaccess redirection at your web server.

Sorry, not in my version. There are a lot of knowledgeable surfers who
eschew the use of Internet Explorer just to get away from the perils of
ActiveX.

Oh, regarding the frames, if you had posted in alt.html, someone likely
would have responded with the link:
http://www.html-faq.com/htmlframes/?framesareevil

 

--

I take your point about bookmarking, but this site is only really for
villagers so it would rarely if ever arise. I had a look at your site, it's
a nice 'clean' layout and scheme. One thing about it I would like to know
please. My site is set out so that each page shows its complete width when
viewed on an 800X600 screen which means on higher resolutions a lot of space
is wasted each side. Yours seems to adjust to fill the screen. How do you
do that please?
Richard

 

Thanks for the nice comment.

By not assigning a fixed width, such as you have:
<div style="position:relative;width:750px;">

Remove the width:750px and see what happens. You would probably also
want to set margins of a few em so your red border doesn't go flush to
the browser viewport.

<div style="position:relative; margin: 3em;"> is a start.