Mozilla Browser - Pages open in window about ten feet wide

Author

Pages open in window about ten feet wide

Marek Williams

2005-05-30, 2:45 am

For about the past week a few sites have been opening in windows that
are wide in the extreme. Such windows automatically have a scroll bar
on the bottom. The page usually appears blank when I open it, or just
a few items are visible. As I scroll across the page, the rest of the
items appear. The worst of these for me is

http://www.shopping.hp.com/

This problem also occurs in Opera 7.23. I installed Opera 8.0 recently
because I heard it had a feature (Ctrl-F11) to make such windows
behave themselves. However, it has no effect on such pages.

The problem never occurred until about two weeks ago in Opera. I only
installed Firefox a few days ago hoping that it would resolve the
problem, but it echoes the same problem as Opera. Although I started
with Firefox 1.03, I installed 1.04 a couple days ago.

The problem does NOT occur with Internet Explorer. Furthermore, I know
other Firefox users who go to the above site and say it loads fine.

Also, a problem which may be related, I have many pages which display
properly, except the text does not wrap at the end of the window.

I suspect a system problem rather than a problem with Firefox. But it
baffles me and I can't think of anything that could be causing this.
Anyone have any idea what may be wrong?

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Marek Williams

2005-05-30, 2:45 am

On Sun, 29 May 2005 20:21:35 -0700, Marek Williams <abc@example.com>
dijo:

>For about the past week a few sites have been opening in windows that
>are wide in the extreme. Such windows automatically have a scroll bar
>on the bottom. The page usually appears blank when I open it, or just
>a few items are visible. As I scroll across the page, the rest of the
>items appear. The worst of these for me is
>
>http://www.shopping.hp.com/

OK, just scored a breakthrough tonight, thanks to Ralph Fox of
netscape.public.mozilla.general. In response to a similar problem from
another user, what he said led me to believe it probably had something
to do with Java. So I went into Tools > Options and started looking at
the Java and Javascript options. I started by unchecking the
Javascript choices one by one. Even after they were all unchecked, the
problem persisted. But when I unchecked Enable Javascript, suddenly
everything became much closer to normal. Note that I left Java
enabled; it was just Javascript that I had to uncheck.

However, even though the page no longer displays with segments
scattered across a ten-foot wide frame, about half the links are
missing and replaced by simple text messages stating what the
button/link was supposed to do.

Knowing that the problem had something to do with Java or Javascript,
I opened Opera 7.23 and went to the same hpshopping.com page. Again,
it appeared streched all the way across an enormously wide frame. I
went into Preferences, found the Java/Javascript section and looked at
the Javascript options. Unlike Firefox, all the options were uncheced.
Only the main Javascript button was still checked. So I uncheced the
Javascript button, leaving the Java button checked -- so now the
selections were the same as in Firefox 1.04. And when I went to
hpshopping.dot com, the pages now open perfectly. Unlike Firefox,
there is absolutely nothing wrong with them now at all.

So I am getting closer to a solution. Further insights would be
welcome.

--
Bogus e-mail address, but I read this newsgroup regularly, so reply here.