[Web4lib] Peculiar behavior in a webpage

[Thomas Dowling]

On 4/3/2007 5:09 PM, Drew, Bill wrote:

> I am updating our website to reflect the college site look and feel.  I
> am almost done but the only page I have a problem with is this one:
>  
> http://library.morrisville.edu/Lingo.html
>  
> 
> In Firefox 2.0.0.3 it only displays part of the right hand column down
> to the term handbill.  The latest version of IE displays it correctly.
> I am using Dreamweaver with a template and lots of CSS.  The problem
> seems to be the style sheet because when I turn off styles everything
> displays.  This is the longest page I have but the only one with a
> problem. Any suggestions?
> 

For me, Firefox cuts off after "footnote".  Since the cutoff varies
between browsers, that suggests it isn't a single markup problem, but
more likely something contributing to a memory problem in Firefox.

I'd bet that Firefox's rendering engine takes XHTML Strict to be very
strict indeed, so you may need to hammer out a couple of validation
problems.  Also, 500k of HTML markup may just be more than its strict
rendering engine can take (I have not heard that reported before, but I
don't recall the last time I saw a page with that much markup).

I'd recommend clearing up the validation issue to see if that helps.  If
not, try versions of the documents that are half as long, then
three-quarters as long, etc. to see if you hit a size limit.  Or leave
out the doctype declaration and see what Firefox does in quirks mode.


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu