Weird display problem at the-big-meow.com -- can people help?

[dianeduane]

I had a mail from a nice lady who said she wanted to subscribe to The Big Meow, but was having trouble. I suggested she click on the button at the top of the sidebar, and she wrote back, "What button?"

This is extremely weird, as the button displays perfectly on every browser I've got. Would those of you who have a moment please look at the "Big Meow" website's index page and tell me whether you can see the "Buy Now" button or not? And if you can't see it, please let me know what browser you're using.

Thanks!

(BTW,  for those of you who might be interested -- now that Lulu.com is offering hardcovers [with dustjackets even!], I'm going to do a costing on how much an "upgrade" to hardcover would cost for those who've already subscribed to the paperback. Stay tuned.)

(If you are interested, you might drop the contact email on the TBM page a mail with just the word HARDCOVER in the subject, so I can get a sense of the numbers.)

Comments

[valkyrwench.livejournal.com]

Firefox 1.5.0.6 - I can see it just fine.

[katerinfg.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can see it. The words are awfully small in comparison to the credit card logos, though, so you might tell her to look for those.

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

Shows up fine for me.

I'm on IE7, running WinXP.

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

Hm, at the top of the sidebar I see a *link* that says something like "Whole-Novel Subscription" and then a button with credit card symbols on it. Maybe she's just not seeing that as a *button* per se?

[mistwolf.livejournal.com]

Firefox 1.5.0.5, works perfectly.

[physixxx.livejournal.com]

if only every IE user was on 7. Alas, it's less-than 3% at the mo.


it shows up on almost everything except IE 4. So, she probably has an old IE, or even an old Netscape.

[summerrose.livejournal.com]

I see the credit card 'Buy Now' button, but it's not a normal button shape, so I might not think of it as a button if I weren't looking for one.

[rebelsheart]

There is definitely a white button with Visa and Mastercard logos that says "Buy Now" on the upper left side of the web page.

[rebelsheart]

Addendum: I'm on Firefox 1.5.0.6

[(Anonymous)]

I can see it.

[blues-dream.livejournal.com]

(Running Safari 2.0.4 on Mac OS 10.4.7, by the way)

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

I have the same configuration as you do, and I can see it too.

[satismagic.livejournal.com]

I can see it just fine (Firefox, latest update running). But I had a similar weird problem recently and it turned out that for some bizarre reason my adblocker was blocking a symbol I needed.

[nelka35.livejournal.com]

Internet Explorer and Opera - button works in both.

[occams_pyramid]

Visible in Firefox 1.5.0.6, Opera 8.52, and IE 6. All on Win 2K

Possibly she is blocking images somehow. That button is served from www.e-junkie.com, so for instance it would not show if she blocks images which are not from the originating site.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was thinking that - maybe an overzealous ad-blocker or kid protector?

[frostyw.livejournal.com]

Firefox has the ability to block images not from the originating web site.

Under Tools menu, Options, there is a Content tab. There is a pair of checkboxes there, "Load Images" and "for the originating web site only." If this is the case, and if the user does not want to choose to untick the second box, she can click on the Exceptions button and add Diane's web site name to the exception list. (It works based on the source of the IMG tag, as I understand it, not the location of the image itself.)

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

I too think this is a possible source of the problem. I once tried ticking that box myself; I soon found I had to untick it again because of problems I was having with buttons on Amazon.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I must admit that the credit card thing doesn't look like a button to me, I wouldn't think of clicking on it unless I happened to notice that there's a link associated with it. However, the text link saying "Quick whole-novel subscription" does look interesting...

(A warning that clicking either the button or the link needs Javascript enabled, otherwise you just get a blank page, might be in order as well. I don't have JS enabled except with sites which I know and trust...)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

There are two ways I can get it not to appear in Opera 9.

1. I turn off 'display images'. At that point, I just get a square area that says 'Image', with no indication that it's the Buy Now button. Adding a suitable Alt tag would solve that.


2. This is sneakier. Enabling Content blocking, and blocking 'https://www.e-junkie.com/ej/*' makes the entire area go away.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

That's a good point, since it's an image-with-a-link and not a real button it will vanish when images are off (a real button wouldn't -- and would fail to work with JS turned off rather than going through to a blank page).

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Disabling both Java and Javascript in Opera doesn't prevent the link being followed. (That that does prevent the destination actually working is a different problem, and not something D can sort out.)

(Opera is wonderfully useful for checking combinations of settings, since unlike IE, most are on a right-click menu.)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

No, that's my point, it's a link not a button. Buttons seem to only work with JS on (although it may depend how they're written, I'm not a web expert)..

[rosefox]

She may also be visually impaired and using a Braille display. General request to anyone who designs websites: please put ALT tags on any images whose content isn't replicated in text, and offer text-only versions of sites that are Flash- or graphics-heavy. (Flash-only sites are the worst. They make me want to throw things.) You'll open yourself up to a much wider audience that way.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

That's a point I usually make, thanks. I've seen SF con sites where all of the important information -- like the date and place -- was in their pretty graphic. It even had ALT text -- it said helpfully "convention logo". Since I read primarily with lynx or links, both text-only browsers...

(I refuse to have Flash installed on anything. JS is bad enough -- and anyone who thinks JS is harmless just try http://keristor.net/js.html, I knocked up that piece of malware in 10 minutes or so, and I don't even know JS, I've seen a site (which may have been taken down) which had a collection of JS snippets designed to wreck any browser with JS enabled....)

The TBM and YW sites are pretty good text only, usually, it's the 3rd party pay site which uses JS. I signed up for TBM using PayPal, which doesn't need it. And the actual PDFs seem to translate pretty well using pdftotext and the like (and there's the HTML version as well anyway).

[gramina.livejournal.com]

I'm using Firefox version 1.8.20060.7278 (copy and paste is my friend!) and I see a link, but not a button. One would think that the text would be clear enough, but having sat next to the sainted people who work IT tech support/customer service, I no longer expect people to be able to reason about computers at all -- taht way, when they do, it's such a nice surprise!

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I see it, but I agree that it doesn't look like a typical button; if I hadn't looked closely, I would have taken it for a flat image.

That said, I do suspect that she's got the image server domain blocked somewhere, and that's what caused the problem. Either that or her security settings are on "ultra-paranoid" and blocking anything that looks third-party. This is something she may need to discuss with a computer-savvy friend who can make changes as needed, if she's not computer-savvy enough to do it herself.

[uitlander]

This is what I see with Firefox 1.5.0.6 running on XP Pro SP2. Is the credit card icon a button? It doesn't seem obvious to me.

[buran.livejournal.com]

I see it just fine, Firefox 2.0b1, and … I have never ever gotten any of the subscription emails and thus no password to download new articles with, and never heard back from when I contacted the support email address that was listed. If you can fix it manually, I'll give you an email address that I'd like the messages to go to (I've reorganized my site's email addresses lately).

[dduane.livejournal.com]

No probs: just drop me a mail and I'll get the info back to you. That database has been giving us no end of trouble...

[buran.livejournal.com]

Sent one to the contact address on the project page.

[madfilkentist]

I see it, though it's a poorly designed button, for reasons others have pointed out.

It takes me to a blank page, though. This is probably because I have Javascript turned off, but I keep telling people: Treating people like dirt if they don't have Javascript enabled in their browsers is a poor way to run a website. "noscript" tags are cheap.

[anamin.livejournal.com]

I do see it, it's the first thing that pops up right there on the left.

[kengr]

I checked the page in Lynx, a text only browser as that is both a "lowest common denominator" and because it's the quickest way to simulate a blind user's screen reader.

And that showed up a problem. You don't have an "alt" tag for the "buy now" image. So all I got was the name of the image file.

Here's the existing code for that "button".

<a target="_blank" href="https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?i=5069&c=single&cl=666"><img src="https://www.e-junkie.com/ej/x-click-butcc.gif" border="0" /></a>

Here's what it *should* be (with the added bit highlighted in red):

<a target="_blank" href="https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?i=5069&c=single&cl=666"><img src="https://www.e-junkie.com/ej/x-click-butcc.gif" border="0" alt="Buy Now" /></a>

Adding that bit will give folks the "Buy Now" text when they mouse over it, and with text only browsers or screen readers they'll get "Buy Now" indicated as a link instead of "x-click-butcc"

Dunno if it'll work, but here's the edited version to test.

[kengr]

Oh, almost forgot. Two tools that are invalubale for catching that sort of "oops".

The W3C Markup Validation Service
http://validator.w3.org/

since these are the folks who *define* HTML, anything that this tool objects to really *does* need to be fixed.

It's also nice in that you can upload the page from your system so you can check it before it goes online.


"WebXACT is a free online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues."
http://webxact.watchfire.com/

A lot of what this checks is overkill for most of use. But it does catch things like broken links and some other issues that are worth pursuing.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

No problems here.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

I see no button, only a link reading, "Quick Whole-Novel Subscription USD $22.50." The link works fine, but it doesn't look like a button.

And I'm using Opera 8.02.

[owlmirror36.livejournal.com]

Firefox 1.5.0.6+Adblock 0.5.3.043 can see it.

The text beneath the button says "(please enable Java in your browser to use the above links)", which is confusing, because the links work just fine even when Java is NOT enabled.

I think you meant "please enable Javascript", since I see that when that is disabled, the link does not pass through to paypal.

[posicat.livejournal.com]

The only thing I can see could be the single quotes around 'The Big Meow'

... ALT="Diane Duane's 'The Big Meow'" ...

some browsers may barf on that if they don't properly process the double quotes and the single quotes. The HTML for that section seems to be well formatted, including /'s on the
tags for XML compatability.

You could try escaping the single quotes instead like

... ALT="Diane Duane's 'The Big Meow'" ...

Most browsers you wouldn't have to do that for, but I could see that being something broken in the browser.

[posicat.livejournal.com]

There's supposed to be a <BR /> in there, where I'm talking about the XML escape.

And all the ' in the second example should be &#39;

Escaping got me too.

[posicat.livejournal.com]

Linux Opera 8.51 works fine when I remote desktop into my home Linux server.