Free Republic Update: Page Too Wide/Scroll Bars

[John Robinson]

I fixed the page-too-wide/horizontal-scrollbar problem many were experiencing. This typically happened when either a long URL or string of characters found its way into the article summary, or when somebody posted a very wide image and you're viewing pings or comments using the brevity setting of "Text" (so that you see the comment text.) I'm embarrassed to admit the fix was a lot simpler than I expected, just a few crucial CSS statements seem to have corrected the issue.

In other news, there haven't been many updates the past few weeks. I'm working on the innards of the beast, rewriting the core database handling routines. About 120 hours into this current project with no end in sight. Heh. The code we're using now is good, but not as flexible as I need it to be for future projects. On the plus side, the new database code will probably find itself open-sourced. Any Perl hackers out there?

[ThePythonicCow]

It's getting weirder. On two systems, both running Linux OpenSuSE 10.3 with Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.13, one displays with perfect layout, and one has the left sidebar bleeding over to the center with the horizontal scrollbar. Both are being displayed to the same screen (via a high end KVM switch.)

I'm wondering through the various browser Preferences and Add-Ons, trying to see if I can find a relevant difference.

You should probably put my posts above on your queue of "stuff to worry about some other day ;)".

[CedarDave]

Here’s another question, John...after reading a thread and hitting Back, the page refreshes and then you must scroll down to find your place. I don’t remember it being like that before...is it my computer or something I can do?

An easy way to refresh your page without losing your place is to click the post number at lower left. [This usually works great when using Firefox (don't know about IE) but if it doesn't, just click the number immediately above it.]

[Miss Didi]

Not quite following you, Dave. I meant that when I’m in a thread and then go back to the Forum, the page refreshes on me and I have to scroll all the way down to find where I left off. Does that make sense? Maybe it always did that but I’m just noticing it now. I use IE, by the way.

[CedarDave]

O.k. I see what you're saying; I tried it and it does refresh to the start of the page. I have no answer for you as I was describing something else.

Might I suggest that you try Firefox. I have six tabs open and am following multiple threads. I just click on the tab and it opens to where I left off. It's a single window on the task bar; the tabs are on top with names of the thread. Also I find it really easy to post images and link url's, use italics, bold text and use other HTML features without trying to remember the HTML codes. Let me know if wish to switch as I can help you get acquainted with it.

[Miss Didi]

All I do is download it onto my computer via mewzilla, right? Nothing scary will happen???

[CedarDave]

All I do is download it onto my computer via mewzilla, right? Nothing scary will happen???

Nothing scary will happen. Go to this link:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

After you download and open it up, go to "Help" and read the introduction for internet explorer users. After you play with it a bit, come back on here or by FReepmail and I'll suggest which extensions to add to customize it for using with FR.

[Miss Didi]

Thanks...I’ll give it a try! ;)

[CedarDave]

One more thing, you know that FR uses < > to indicate HTML tags. Some other bulletin board forums use brackets [ ] for their tags. One of the suggested add-on extensions lets you switch back and forth depending which forum you are using. Really useful if you browse on a lot of differing forums.

Also, it has a built in spell checker (underlines a mis-spelled word in red as you type) and you can add a dictionary to search really obscure words. I’d be lost without FF. Even our IT people, when they need to check something out, will use Firefox on my work computer.