As many of you know we have been in a complete rebuild of the OCF website's hundreds of pages. (Actually a larger number if you consider all the news article pages) We are about 90% done making the site compliant with the new web standards (W3C - you can click on the little icon on the bottom right of the home page to learn more) This new web standard will speed up and revolutionize the way people view sites on the web. Anyway, when you are rebuilding this many pages there are plenty of opportunities to screw up a link, connect it to the wrong new page, create typos, and more. Chester and I would be very appreciative if as many of you as possible would wander around the site, reading the pages for errors that we might have missed, or links that do not work or go to the right new page. (There are some intentional dead links in the site that will go new pages soon to be put up) You may get linked to a page that looks like the old OCF page style, and if so, please copy the URL of the page and email it to me with any other errors that you find. When you write copy and build the pages yourself, it is very easy to miss things, as your mind already knows what the sentence says, and will blow right buy a wrong word, a misspelling, etc. Any help from those that have time would be greatly appreciated.

As soon as we are sure that things are good to this point, we have many new pages to start putting up on eating, swallowing, and speech issues, reconstruction including dental implants, and the addition of about 50 PDF articles from oral cancer authorities that will go into more depth related to many of the oral cancer topics which we have obtained permission to add to the site. We will also be adding a completely new section on end of life issues. This has been a difficult part to find qualified professional co-authors for, and equally difficult to write. But it is a necessary component of a comprehensive site. Please chip in proofreaders, and help us offer quality pages that work properly to the thousands of people that come to us each day.

Brian, when I go to the home page all of the text disappears. I can highlight it and read it for a moment but when the little annimation at the bottom of the page transitions it disappears again.

Is it me?

Thanks,
Cindy

I have the same problem. It's not just the home page, either. Other pages, the text doesn't disappear but doesn't show up unless you scroll down -- where the box for text appears to widen out because there are no menu items on the left.

Well, having looked at the site over the last three months since we started the rebuild on numerous computers and different operating systems, I would have to say this is something local in your machine or browser. Given all the people that come to the site, I haven't been hearing this from anyone, but that the two of you have a similar problem means there is some commonality there.

I would first be sure that I have downloaded the latest version of the web browser that you are using. Some people come to the site with a 6-generation-old web browser, and that isn't going to work very well. Regardless of whether you are a PC or MAC user, the hottest new browser out there is called firefox...you can google for it and it is a free download. Internet Explorer, even the newest versions are dinosaurs. I am going to call Chester tonight and see what he has to say about it. But I haven

I will try dumping the cache. Unfortunately, I have a work-supplied laptop as my only pc right now (the other one was old and died) and I can't download and install any new application onto it without going through IT at work (they are concerned about people downloading stuff with viruses and worms that would spread through the work network) which would make geetting firefox a pain.

I am using internet explorer already, though which I think means I could install an upgrade on my own-will try to do that one of these days.

Brian,

I am having the same problem as Cindy and Nelie. It only happens on the home page.

I am using Internet Explorer, the latest version.

Jerry

Brain, I've narrowed down when and possibly why the other problem I mentioned happens--the one where you can't see anything in the main text box until lower down after the menu items end. It is on the pages that the right hand (text) box begins with a big photograph : "restoration", "dental issues", "emotional aspects" and "people" were the ones I checked. The "Oral cancer in the news" page, which has a smaller picture doesn't have this problem.

I think it's just the picture won't display without overlapping the frame on the left with as small a laptop screen as I have --maybe that in combo. with an older version of internet explorer. Still, I will say that I generally do not have any problems like this at all as I surf aorund the web (which I do way too much) and I'm probably not the only person we'll get looking at these pages with a laptop and an old version of internet explorer. In some cases, it appears ther's nothing on the right side of the page at all--you can't even see where the photo begins until you scroll down!

Nelie

Brian --

Another thing is that some of the forum topics seem to be missing -- I was looking for the one "Brian and OCF in the News" to add something about recent changes in TSA rules for air travel, but there are no posts listed on the General Board between Sept. 8 and Sept. 20 (this "News" thread started Sept. 18, according to the Search function. However, when the message title -- which comes up using Search -- is clicked you get an error message saying the topic dosen't exist).

Gail

Just for the record, I am having no problems with it here. Thanks Brian. JaneP.

I have no problems either using Safari on iMac. I love the new design Brian. Helen

Gail. The forum reindexes its search engine every two weeks automatically. In the interim I moved the topic out of the general forum into the activism forum http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/8/t/000077.html

Because the general forum has so much stuff in there it can run a little slow. So the search link for it hasn't been updated by the program yet. If you search for it this weekend it will probably find it again. When the forum is indexed it is closed to everyone, hence we don't do it every day or even every week. It takes hours for the program to index all the postings.

We could try rebuilding the home page from scratch and see what happens, but it is no different in code than all the other pages.... they are all made from the same CSS ( cascading style sheet)

Nelie. In internet explorer you can set the default fonts that you want to see web pages in, and the size of those fonts. Set your fonts to the word default instead of picking a size or font type. That may make the problem go away. The new web standards allow people with bad eye sight to enlarge the type on their pages and have it re-wrap to fit their screens. This is one of the new benefits of the new web standards. You can also view web pages without any graphics for those that only want the content and the links on a page... a web geek/ researcher desire. So check your preferences. Another thing you should check in your preferences is that the size screen you have ( in pixels) is what is selected as your preference. No one should have to scroll left and right to see any of our pages or any pages built with CSS if the browser is set right, it will allow our page to adapt to your size screen. Again one of the reasons things are being standardized.

Brian, As an IT professional I did think of those things that you mentioned and tried several others as well. On my Mac it works fine in Safari but on my XP box it doesn't.

I have seen this problem before and it is something in IE I believe.

Soon IE7 will be released and we can all be plagued by yet another Microsoft upgrade! hehe

Tech Joke! Sorry.

IE has always had a bizarre way of handling certain code at times and it has always been somewhat of a mystery as to why these things happen on some machines and not others.

This is why I LOVE MY MAC!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nuff Said! :-)

Thanks for the help though. It is possible that there is something in the code for the home page alone that is conflicting on some IE machines. Maybe rewriting the code fresh will fix the problem. Of course it is not the easiest of solutions but maybe if you want to build a new page and then upload it to a remote directory and send me a link I can test it and see if anything changes before you go to the trouble of uploading it to the site.

Just a couple of suggestions. I have written HTML code that wacked out on me and I could never really figure out why and then I rewrote it from scratch in a new file and it worked fine.

{{{{{shrugging shoulders}}}}}}}}

The technical world is still such a mystery, even to those of us who are suppose to be its master. :-)

The site looks great everywhere else I have been. I do like the redo. It is much easier to navigate and find information.

Thanks for all that you do!

With Love,
Cindy

Boy, I hate to even venture into this deep water! I have no idea what the H*** you all are talking about, but when I go to the Home page, I get lots of blank space and have to scroll way down to find something [ that is not an adequate discription, I know]. Same thing happens when I choose a particular topic to view. I did change my text size to smallest and got a few more things in view. Guess Brian, Chester, Nelie, Cindy, Minnie or someone is just going to have to come to Arkansas and set me straight. Amy

Home page issue. This issue is because you have java script turned off in your browser, and that scrolling type at the bottom of the page is java script. When your browser does not allow it to display, it causes the issue that you are seeing. We can rebuild this crawl in something other than Javascript, and Chester will do it in the next week. Most people have it turned on because it is used so much in web sites. (It is the most common way to get movement into your web site) But sometimes in highly protected computers where people have heavy protection software enabled, that software AUTOMATICALLY disables Javascript because it is a macro running in the site, and a site that was built to screw you up intentionally could attach a virus to it. We wouldn't and no one can do that to our site, but that is the answer to the problem. Quick fix - enable Javascript in your browser. Slow fix, wait till Chester rewrites the code for this as a Flash macro.

Cindy.... this is commonly refered to as computer voodoo. I had a printer that would not print through an ethernet cable that I had used for years. I unplugged and replugged the cable looking for loose fittings....nothing. I friend said change the cable end for end. Now you know this is BS, and wouldn't make any difference. I did what he said, and the @#$%^ printer started working. Computer Voodoo

Ohhh the Voodoo..

I have a client that is one of the largest limo/transportation companies in Houston. They have a fairly sizable network and every now and then we would have to take down one of the client computers and format and reinstall Windows because for some spooky unknown reason it would crash everytime they opened IE.

It happened to almost every computer in the office except the servers. We have never been able to figure out what was in that office that caused the problem.

Now they are all XP and we built new servers about a year ago and it hasn't happened since but I can tell you it was frustrating.

Different users, different machines, same weird problem. We were convinced there was a gremlin in the office or something that would come and attack at night.

After doing this for the last 10 years I can tell you that there is not a single thing a computer can do that would surprise me.

You crack me up though. I have had a customer with aa similar issue as your printer and although it seems counterintuitive.... it does work.

And now you can see why it is that I have chosen to change careers and become a lawyer instead. HAHAHA

Cindy

Can I paraphrase Amy? HUH!? JaneP

I do not have the patience that Chester has with software and hardware. I just want it to do what I want it to do, and I do not particularly want to understand every idiosyncrasy of why it is able to. While I have a good working knowledge of things, it wouldn

Well, my personality , being what is is, has never wanted to be 99.9% of anything ordinary So I hope youall get this fixed where we "unordinary" folks can have access-if not- I repeat- someone is going to have to come to the Arkansas Ozarks and fix me [and maybe play a little golf, or fish for trout or sit on my deck and drink margaritas and watch the sun set over the lake while you are here. Fondly, Amy

I tried to get on via the W3?? in the right corner of the home page, made no sense to me. If I lose this website I will go crazy, so whatever you decide to do, don't change this site that we know until you are sure we can get where you are going. Otherwise you will leave some of us lost, who need this site something awful. I just found you all, do not leave me. Tom and I won't be able to golf, drink margaritas or watch the sunset yet...he has surgery friday, rad next 3-6 weeks for starters.

Since 80% of the site has been rebuilt over the last 4 months, is up and running well, and you are still here, I think it is safe to say that you are not in daanger of losing us. What I had hoped was that more people would actually wander around the hundreds of pages of content and PDF's on the site READ THEM, and find things that were wrong.... I guess this thread has turned more into a discussion of two issues, and I have yet to get one email about a typo, a link which goes to the wrong place or anything else, which was my original request. Perhaps you have all been looking but have not found anything. The main architecture of the site is beyond the comprehension of most people that come here. Given the hundreds of people that come everyday, it appears to be working well even with the new pages, as it has for years. I just needed a little help making it flawless.

Brian,

I have spent so much time here, I would be happy to browse away. Much better for me than dream shopping! My husband and kids love (and hate) my critical eyes for proofing, but you asked for it!

Thank you for the opportunity to assist you!

Sincerely,
Lisa

I'm not having any problems accessing anything. The site is working just fine. What I do have a problem with is the pages being too wide. I now have a slide bar on the bottom of the screen. I find it somewhat bothersome to keep moving that bar back and forth to read every line. I've changed the text size but that doesn't do anything to the total size of the page. I still have that slide bar that has to be moved to read every line, just the text gets smaller.

Help? How do I get the page width to fit on my screen the way it naturally did before?? I've actually stopped reading discussion groups for this very reason.

Your monitor settings on your computer are wrong. Our web site pages are 8.25 inches wide. You can't possibly be looking at monitor smaller than that. So this has to be in your monitor preferences and it thinks that you have a bigger monitor than you do, and it is displaying things at the wrong resolution. I am not a PC person, I use MACs, but for sure this is an easy reset of what it thinks your monitor resolution is. For sure you are going to have to scroll vertially, some of our pages are 20" tall.... Perhaps some other PC user here can walk you through this. and while the page always has a black backgorund behind it and on a giant monitor you can strech the page as wide as you want, you only get more black around the page, and the width of the site's message board remains the same.

Your display preferences need to be changed.

Right click anywhere in a blank area of your desktop and then click on properties on the menu that pops up

when the window opens select the settings tab at the top

if the slide bar on the left reads 600 X 400 then you are either running in safe mode, you have accidentally changed the setting, or your video driver has taken a hike and you are running on the lame vga standard that is a windows default

change the setting by sliding the bar to the right until you reach 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768

it may ask you to keep the changes select yes

if the computer is running in safe mode then just reboot

if you have a laptop then reboot as they tend to reset themselves to the default for the screen

if none of this works or if you have no other selection and the bar will not slide or is grayed out then your video driver has failed or become corrupt

you can try to reinstall the correct driver or take the computer to a qualified technician (NOT BEST BUY) and have them do it for you

I hope this helps! Good luck.

Cindy

Oh yea.. one more thing,

Brian, you need to center the site map banner at the bottom of the screen

it looks a little odd on the left
:-)

Cindy

What page site map are you talkng about? The small nav bar at the bottom of this page for instance is centered, everyting on one line. The site map link at the bottom of all the other main links on the home page is in line with all the other links. They are all on the left so I cannot figure out what you are talking about. On this page depending on how you have your font size set (default or not) it will appear in differnet possitions as you increase the font site away from default. Increase the font size by one factor on my monitor, and it will force the seach and the site map links to a second line, increase the font size again, and newsletter moves to a second line along with them, but still centered. But if you begin to decrease the font size until you get to the preset default (medium) all the liks are on one staight line centered, not on two lines. Casacading style sheets allow you lots of latitude in how you view web pages. But if you want to view it the way it was built you have to let the page work at the default settings. Safari, FireFox, will test properly some old versions of IE will display differently. Microsoft hasn't gotten IE up to current standards. They keep syaing that they are going to get it out, but every six months they set a new date, forward by months. We can't build a site for a browser which isn't up to the current standards that even they are working towards.

I am using IE V7.05 and have for over a month now. it is a beta test version and works better then IE6 but like others have mentioned the little banner window at the bottom (with the W3C logo on it is offset to the left of the screen. The earlier version highlighted the previous topic you were looking at the new pages do not.

Brian
If it

I do not know if that is true. If our link takes you to Amazon UK, (which I cannot test here) then it should. Amazon is the only commercial banner link that OCF allows on its site at this time. We have tried to keep OCF web site clean of advertising, not all of which is pertinent, or even good for you, but would generate large amounts of money for OCF. I hope that people appreciate that by using the OCF link to Amazon to purchase without any money or effort on their part, Amazon will give us about 2% of whatever you purchase back as a donation. Are we going to make all of our bills just through the Amazon link? No way...but every cent helps when that web bill comes around each month. I urge all of you to drag this page http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/products/books.htm down to the IE, Safari, Firefox bar at the top of your screens and rename it Amazon. When you want to buy from them, our link to Amazon, which is on that page will identify you as an OCF referral, and ON THAT VISIT ONLY, we will get a donation from them based on your purchases. If it is always on your NAV bar at the top of your browser, every time that you want to buy a book, camera, DVD or all the tons of stuff that Amazon now sells at a discount, you will be helping OCF, and it only take one more mouse click to do so.... are we worth an extra mouse click of everyone's time? It costs you nothing.

Please click on that and if you purchase something email me and tell me what it was and in a week I will check the Amazon/OCF chart and see if it shows up. We'll have our answer then.

I see what Gary sees. The bottom banner with the W3C logo is oriented at the left side of the screen.

Cindy

Me too.

I am emailing Chester the url of this thread and going to have him take a look. Let me know if anyone sees changes. Please be very specific about what browser and version you are looking at the pages in. It is perfect in my current version of Safari, and in Chesters current version of FireFox

Ok now everything is on the left. hehe

The whole message board. But hey, it is lined up with the bottom now. :-)

I am using the latest IE6 version on an XP box. I haven't checked it on my Mac yet.

Cindy

Just to complicate matters -- until today I didn't get the slide bar on the bottom (i.e., the page was sized correctly in the window, no matter the size of the window). Now I do.

And for some reason the clickable text on the home page of the forum is LARGE and has turned sort of yellow-gold. I'm using Windows XP Professional and IE 6.0.2900.2180.

Will check from home when I get there in about an hour to see if this is happening there as well.
------
Hmm. Large gold text has returned to normal color and size. Slide bar is still at the bottom, though.

YEEE HAAA!!!

It is all in line in the center of my screen now. Whatever he did worked!!

Thanks!
Cindy

This may not help (or maybe you all have tweaked something) -- I'm now on my home computer, which also has Windows XP Professional and the same version of IE as at the office, and the page resizes perfectly.

It looks fine now - thank you Chester!

I just went surfing around the redesigned site some more (funny how I do this to procrastinate when I'm buried in grading) and I wanted to say that the issue I was having before (where many pages with pictures didn't display the pic at the top but far down the page after the menu on the left had ended) appears to have been totally fixed and I know I didn't upgrade anything so THANK YOU Chester!

As a postscript, I was looking for things like typos too but as you all can probably tell from my posts here I am basically a little dyslexic when it comes to reading text on a computer screen and typos slip by me all the time!

Nelie

Lisa - I'm having the same problem on my desktop, though the laptop doesn't do it. Nothing else has changed (I don't think) but this new website is too wide for one screen width on my big screen. I'll try the resolution suggestion of Brian's. TJ

Tom,

Cindy's suggestion worked for me. My resolution was 800x600 and I had to change it to 1024x768 to get the full page to fit on my flat panel monitor.
The text size was tiny and uncomfortable but you can change that by clicking on "view" on your toolbar and upping the text size.

Computers..... can't live without them anymore but want to smack it with a hammer sometimes. LOL!

I've had no problem at all with the new format

"a 'river derchi..."

Tizz

To all,

If you have a mouse with a roll wheel, here's a little trick that will help you adjust the size of your screen. While holding down the "Ctrl" key, roll the wheel away from you to enlarge the text and screen and roll it toward you to make it smaller. This does not work on all websites and screens, but it does work any place on the OCF website. Try it, you'll like it.

Jerry