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

[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).