Font size selection problem

[VanderHart, Robert]

Hi,

Unless I'm missing something, this one has me stumped:

On one of the pages on our web site, I have put a small Javascript that
allows users to select a font size (1-6) with which to view the page.  The
page is an alphabetical list of over 700 journal titles, and I thought it
would be nice to give users the option to select a smaller font size in case
they wanted to see more titles on the screen at once, or a larger font size
in case they wanted less eye strain.

Here's the problem: one of my co-workers showed me the page (located at
http://library.umassmed.edu/alphjournal.html) on her browser (Netscape
4.06), and the font size was stuck on the smallest size.  Nothing I did
(reload the page, clear the browser cache, logout and back in on Windows NT)
could change the size.  I checked her preferences and she has JavaScript
enabled and is accepting cookies.  When viewed with IE 4, the selectbox
works fine.  Also, the selectbox works fine on my computer using both IE 4
and NN 4.05.

The most puzzling thing is that when I viewed the page source on my
co-worker's Netscape browser, the line of code that should read

<BASEFONT SIZE=4>

instead reads 

<BASEFONT SIZE=[her email address]; font=N> 
where N is a number 1-6 that differs every time I reload the page.

I suppose I could just scrap the whole script and let people chose the font
size themselves in their browser prefs, but this seemed like a more
user-friendly approach.  Besides, it's really got me curious.

Any ideas/suggestions for making this work and/or why this is happening?


Robert J. Vander Hart
Reference Librarian/Government Documents Specialist
The Lamar Soutter Library
University of Massachusetts Medical School
55 Lake Ave. N
Worcester, Massachusetts 01655

(508) 856-3290
Robert.VanderHart at umassmed.edu
http://library.umassmed.edu