Help Us Catch A Bug
If this post is hard to read you may have been cursed with the “dark-on-dark” bug. The website’s new “look” that you see may not be the real new look. Feedback on the new site has been 100% positive, but there are still little bugs running around. One such “bug” is that certain computer screens display the website as dark text on a dark gray/brown background, not as black text on a white background, as intended.
On the day of the launch our reader, Caridwen, left the following comment:
Congratulations on your smart new site! It’s a great step forward from what was already a great blog. For me, the only difficulty is reading the print with the dark background, as my eyesight isn’t too good.
Our follow-up on this comment seemed to imply that the only problem was a slow Internet connection — it seems that Caridwen had been reading things before the page had fully loaded. But today we received an email from a dear Mrs. Johns that mentioned the same problem.
We responded to this email informing her that others had also experienced this problem due to a slow Internet connection and that she should allow sufficient time for the page to load. However, her second email leads us to assume that this “dark-on-dark” problem may be widespread. She wrote:
I am using Mozilla in case that helps. The page load is completed and says it’s done. It still looks the same way. I am looking at the articles and articles home page, and the entire list of resources does not show up unless I move my cursor over it. The conference page looks the same (dark on dark), as does the blog. I have high speed DSL, so I’m not sure what the problem is.
Alex and I are not only unsure of what the problem is (though we have friends who probably do), but we’re also unsure of how widespread the problem is. If you are viewing any portion of this website as “dark-on-dark” rather than “dark-on-white,” please use the comment section to alert us. Thank you for your help.
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:31 am
The problem is occurring in Mozilla/Netscape/Firefox. In these browsers, the site’s dark background color is also the background color of the posts and sidebar (spaces that are white or gray in IE), making the black and red text almost unreadable.
The site looks great in IE, though.
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:35 am
That’s strange. Alex and I use Mozilla Firefox and it obviously looks right for us. Any other Firefox users experiencing this problem?
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:44 am
Looks like it’s a Firefox 1.0.x issue–it’s dark-on-dark in Firefox 1.0.1, but not in Firefox 1.5.0.6, for me. By the way, the slow loading problem can be solved by using a backup background color, similar to the background image, in the CSS. I can’t figure out what’s causing the main problem though.
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:04 am
It’s fine here. I am a Mozilla Firefox user, but I am not sure of the version number.
~Nella
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:13 am
Changing the #Main CSS to the below mostly solves the problem for me:
#Main{
background: white url(/img/background.gif) top left repeat-y;
border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;
}
Note the leading slash on the image URL as well as the invisible border. Go figure. Maybe you can figure out what’s actually causing the problem, and a more elegant solution. I also added the “white” to the beginning of the background attribute to demonstrate how you could fix the slow-loading problem as well.
Even with this modification, the bottom of the sidebar is jammed up against the bottom of #Main, but that’s better than the dark background!!
Hope this helps!
September 2nd, 2006 at 12:19 pm
I just upgraded from Firefox 1.0.7 to 1.5.0.6 (latest version), and that fixed it in Firefox.
The problem is still there in the latest version of Mozilla (1.7.13).
September 2nd, 2006 at 1:06 pm
I’m using Firefox and it is dark-on-dark on my screen.
Hope this problem is easy to fix for you guys!
September 2nd, 2006 at 1:09 pm
I’m using Mozilla and it looks fine…i think it’s the latest version b/c i just switched computers and had to download it.
September 2nd, 2006 at 1:10 pm
It’s fine in IE, but grey in both Netscape and Mozilla Firefox.
September 2nd, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Like several others, the kicker on this computer was upgrading from Firefox 1.0.7 to 1.5.0.6. This site is actually how I discovered the browser wasn’t up to date, because the site looked like it should on other computers, but wasn’t displaying correctly on this one.
September 2nd, 2006 at 3:53 pm
Thanks Dan, I incorporated your suggestion into the fix. Thanks also to Alex King for suggesting we try a non-breaking-space in the clearing div at the bottom.
September 2nd, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Btw, This *appears* fixed on my tests of the FF 1.0.x versions. Hopefully it’s fixed for you all too. Please let us know if it still poses problems for you. Thanks.
September 2nd, 2006 at 5:51 pm
I’m in Mozilla 1.5.0.6 and it’s just dandy.
September 2nd, 2006 at 7:31 pm
I just heard back from Mrs. Johns, she says that the blog is fixed but the rest of the site is still messed up. Is anyone else experiencing this?
September 2nd, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Looking awesome from where I’m at, guys. Nothing is out-of-sync or difficult to read… I’m an Internet Explorer user if that helps.
September 3rd, 2006 at 5:49 am
Brett-
Yes, I hadn’t noticed it before, but all the non-blog pages have the same problem in Mozilla Mozilla 1.7.13 (not Firefox 1.5.0.6 or IE).
September 3rd, 2006 at 10:34 am
I’m using Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 and until today, the text has been on a dark background. Now it is on a white/light gray background. I wondered if something was wrong
As far as the non-blog pages, the conference page is fine, but the resource pages have the dark gray/charcoal background for me.
September 3rd, 2006 at 10:39 am
I hadn’t realized the rest of the site (minus the forum) had the same problem. I’ve gone through the rest of the site and fixed it. It *all* appears good now in Mozilla, and FF 1.0.x versions for me.
September 3rd, 2006 at 11:06 am
I confirm that — the problem now seems to be entirely fixed.
September 4th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Hey there! Just came by today to see how the site was doing. Everything I’ve visited so far looks just great! Yay! Now I can go read some more….
Thanks! (who knew a little point-something-something number could make such a dfference?!)