slipkid - 12:02 am on Nov 21, 2012 (gmt 0)

I have discovered a solution to my problem.

Summarizing, the text input box was locking the display of the web page at the point where the text box was located. The consequence was that the page's masthead was not rendering in full.

The text box is for the input of query terms to a search program that is triggered by clicking a submit button. This action causes some Javascript to run the program.

It was the Javascript causing the problem:

<script type="text/javascript">
document.SearchForm.Terms.focus();
</script>

The problem code was .focus() in the Javascript.

I deleted .focus() and replaced it with:

.triggerHandler("focus")

The web page now loads normally with the masthead fully visible and justified to the top of the screen.

I checked the rendering in IE and Firefox. The code also validates.