Netscape 4.5 dhtml error

Doesnt scroll down the layer for some reason

[kincaidscott]

This is working fine in IE and NS6, but for some reason, NS 4.5 doesn't like it. If you go to [deragons.com...] , you will notice on the links that the content continues off the bottom of the page but you cannot scroll. Using IE and NS6, it scrolls down just fine. I have been staring at the code for hours and can't figure out what NS doesnt like or what I need to add. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[tedster]

Welcome to Webmaster World!

I'm getting some very strange results trying to validate your code -- that is the first step I would suggest taking with this kind of problem, by the way.

W3C throws an error and can't give a report! And my Homesite validator reports unclosed quotes on almost every line, even when the line looks completely blank!

So I'd suggest you get the code to pass a validation, and see if the problem is still there.

[MikeFoster]

It looks and works fine with NN4.75 on Win98. NN4.5 is buggier than 4.7x. Try it without the inline body.onload handler.

[tedster]

Whatever changes you made, today it renders for me (Netscape 4.77) and yesterday it didn't. Quick note -- you need to close the BODY and HTML tags.

[IanKelley]

I have a question... Why worry about Netscape 4.5? The two guys out there that are still using probably won't ever end up at your site ;-)

[kincaidscott]

Thanks for the help everyone. The w3 HTML validator found some stuff that I needed to close. Once I did, it worked perfectly. I'll now use that on every site we produce.

Someone asked why I care about 4.5? I dont, but my client will probly be one of the two people and when he goes home and looks at his site with his old NS, he'll be pissed. Plus, if it doesn't work on 4.5, then theres probly some error in the HTML anyways, might as well fix it.

Thanks again for the help. LAter

[Marcia]

>my client will probly be one of the two

And a Yahoo editor could be the other of the two, to the tune of $299 to look. :)

[mcfaddes]

I'm having a very similar problem. Netscape 4.73 doesn't display scrollbars (though it reserves screen space for them) regardless of the height of my content if it's in div tags. When I get rid of <div> tags for some of my sections, the scrollbars show up as usual (obviously, for dhtml I need the dive tags though). Also, when I put a tall image (for testing purposes, it ruins my layout) in the main body it forces the vertical scrollbar as expected.

I have validated my html, and just got my usual errors (no image alt tags etc). I have tried the various overflow settings for CSS to no avail (my understanding is that Netscape <6.0 doesn't support them).

Any suggestions greatly appreciated. I'm beating my head against the wall on this one.

[groundworksinteractive.com...]

or [groundworksinteractive.com...] (to take flash out of the picture for simplicity sake).

Thanks

[mcfaddes]

Well, I broke down and went with a Netscape patch approach.

Just before I close the body tag, if the browser is netscape 4.x I document.write a spacer image of height "window.innerHeight" that forces the scrollbar to appear and be functional for all window sizes.

An ugly solution (one I was trying hard to avoid) but it works...

Still, if there are other workarounds to this problem I would love to hear them.

Thanks.

[tedster]

mcfaddes, welcome to webmaster world.

That may not be an elegant solution, but at least it works. I wrestle with that NN4.x bug all the time, especially on pages that use tables with css. You've given me another tool in the toolbox.

[MikeFoster]

NN4 and Opera both seem to treat positioned elements as not part of the body element. So the scrollbar doesn't appear because there's not enough body content - it doesn't matter how much content you have in positioned elements.

I just use a bunch of <br> tags to extend the body. Or you can use the <pre> element to get a similar effect.