Revealing mini-statistics

[sylas]

On my member's profile page, there is a profile picture, and below that there is a tabbed box for messages, statistics, friends, etc.

On the right hand side of the page, there are three small buttons marked "Mini statistics", "Friends" and "Recent Visitors".

When I first came along, these seemed to have a small click box to expand or unexpand the button and reveal something about, respectively, mini-statistics, friends and recent visitors. I clicked a button to compress the information, and it all folded up away from view as I expected. But now there seems to be no way to make them unfold again, or expand. Should there be a little click point on each of these three buttons to make them expand?

Cheers -- Sylas

 

[cristo]

How bizarre! Yes, I imagine there should be a point to click that expands the options again (I clicked it and now can't see any of the options on any profiles!)

I'm sure Greg will get onto this when he sees this thread.

 

[Kurdt]

I was able to compress mine and then a broken image box came up. When I clicked on that they expanded again.

 

[Wellesley]

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I knew I read about someone else having the same problem.

Sylas, did you ever figure out a way to expand the compressed boxes?

EDIT: I tried using Internet Explorer, and got a broken box like Kurdt. Yet, when I used Firefox, the button simply disappeared. Any thoughts?

 

[sylas]

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I knew I read about someone else having the same problem.

Sylas, did you ever figure out a way to expand the compressed boxes?

EDIT: I tried using Internet Explorer, and got a broken box like Kurdt. Yet, when I used Firefox, the button simply disappeared. Any thoughts?

This problem is still not fixed, as far as I can tell. I presume forum people are now aware of it. I've been content to wait until they get around to fixing it.

For anyone else... I guess a thread like this is sufficient notice of a problem. Should I have made a bug report by some other means? I'm not concerned to have it fixed at once, as long as the forum maintainers are aware of the issue and have it on a to do list somewhere.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

yes the decompress image is missing. I'll look into fixing it later today. thanks

 

[sylas]

yes the decompress image is missing. I'll look into fixing it later today. thanks

Thread bump...

I am still not able to expand the mini-statistics, friends, and recent statistics boxes that are over on the right hand side of a profile page...

Cheers -- sylas

 

[cristo]

Greg's on vacation at the moment. If he doesn't see this when he gets back, I'll draw his attention to it.

 

[sylas]

Greg's on vacation at the moment. If he doesn't see this when he gets back, I'll draw his attention to it.

Bump. I've found another instance of the same problem.

I've just recently started using my PF blog, with a single article. I notice that in the blog area, there are all kinds of useful information boxes down the left hand side. For example, I closed up the box "Recent Visitors", and now I would like to open it up again. But I can't; once closed there's no button to open it up again.

Here's an attached image of what I mean:

 

[sylas]

Bump. I've bumped this a couple of times, and sent a PM. It's a minor point, but I am finding it frustrating.

There are a number of places in PF where there is a box that should be able to be compressed and then expanded again, as you choose. I have found that after compression, there's no button to expand it again. I've now twice lost features that I want to use or access, and I simply can't get at them.

Comments above indicate other people have the same problem. My immediate issues at present:

• Under my blogs, I cannot see the information box "Recent Visitors". I've compressed it and now I can't get it back. Screen shot above, at msg #9.
• Under the view member profile window, I have compressed the three boxes for "Mini Statistics", "Friends", and "Recent Visitors", at the right hand side of the screen. Screenshot attached to this post.

Is this fixable? Please?

Thanks -- sylas

 

[Evo]

Bump. I've bumped this a couple of times, and sent a PM. It's a minor point, but I am finding it frustrating.

There are a number of places in PF where there is a box that should be able to be compressed and then expanded again, as you choose. I have found that after compression, there's no button to expand it again. I've now twice lost features that I want to use or access, and I simply can't get at them.

Comments above indicate other people have the same problem. My immediate issues at present:

• Under my blogs, I cannot see the information box "Recent Visitors". I've compressed it and now I can't get it back. Screen shot above, at msg #9.
• Under the view member profile window, I have compressed the three boxes for "Mini Statistics", "Friends", and "Recent Visitors", at the right hand side of the screen. Screenshot attached to this post.

Is this fixable? Please?

Thanks -- sylas

View attachment 21800

What browser are you using?

 

[sylas]

What browser are you using?

I'm using Firefox version 3.5.5

 

[Evo]

I'm using Firefox version 3.5.5

If you look at Wellesley's post, it seems the problem is with Firefox.

 

[Borg]

Sylas,

It's a cookie setting. Go into your Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Show Cookies. Find the PhysicsForums cookies and open them up. There will be one called "vbulletin_collapse". Deleting that cookie will restore all of your collapsed panels.

Cheers,
Borg

 

[sylas]

Sylas,

It's a cookie setting. Go into your Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Show Cookies. Find the PhysicsForums cookies and open them up. There will be one called "vbulletin_collapse". Deleting that cookie will restore all of your collapsed panels.

Cheers,
Borg

Thanks very much; that got it back.

But is this really a Firefox bug, or is it a more general problem that only exhibits with Firefox?

As I understand it, the intended functionality of these boxes is that a user should be able to compress and expand them at will, with a mouse click. Apparently, I can't do that on Firefox; I'll have to go in and modify cookies explicitly.

Greg notes above that there is a problem with a missing image; being the missing decompress button:

yes the decompress image is missing. I'll look into fixing it later today. thanks

Why is firefox not showing the image? Is there something non-portable in the protocols being used, or is it actually a bug with Firefox not recognizing protocols that it should?

Now that I can correct the problem by hand this is not a matter of urgency to me personally; and I am now your fawning slave, Borg. But it may still be worth looking into for the sake of many users who are using Firefox.

Thanks very much to you all for helping me with this! -- Sylas

 

[Evo]

Thanks very much; that got it back.

But is this really a Firefox bug, or is it a more general problem that only exhibits with Firefox?

As I understand it, the intended functionality of these boxes is that a user should be able to compress and expand them at will, with a mouse click. Apparently, I can't do that on Firefox; I'll have to go in and modify cookies explicitly.

Greg notes above that there is a problem with a missing image; being the missing decompress button:


Why is firefox not showing the image? Is there something non-portable in the protocols being used, or is it actually a bug with Firefox not recognizing protocols that it should?

Now that I can correct the problem by hand this is not a matter of urgency to me personally; and I am now your fawning slave, Borg. But it may still be worth looking into for the sake of many users who are using Firefox.

Thanks very much to you all for helping me with this! -- Sylas

It's a problem with trying to make everything work with every browser.

For example the LaTex we have is a hack and therefore doesn't work with every version of every browser.

 

[Borg]

Thanks very much; that got it back.

But is this really a Firefox bug, or is it a more general problem that only exhibits with Firefox?

As I understand it, the intended functionality of these boxes is that a user should be able to compress and expand them at will, with a mouse click. Apparently, I can't do that on Firefox; I'll have to go in and modify cookies explicitly.

Greg notes above that there is a problem with a missing image; being the missing decompress button:Why is firefox not showing the image? Is there something non-portable in the protocols being used, or is it actually a bug with Firefox not recognizing protocols that it should?

Now that I can correct the problem by hand this is not a matter of urgency to me personally; and I am now your fawning slave, Borg. But it may still be worth looking into for the sake of many users who are using Firefox.

Thanks very much to you all for helping me with this! -- Sylas

Sylas,

You're very welcome. Slavery isn't necessary though. :rofl:

As far as the missing image, that's exactly what the problem seems to be. Here are the collapsed and uncollapsed versions of the images that are being used:

https://www.physicsforums.com/Prime/buttons/collapse_generic.gif"
https://www.physicsforums.com/Prime/buttons/collapse_generic_collapsed.gif"

Firefox has a tendency to not show anything if an image link is broken. There's probably a setting for it to act more like IE but, I didn't see anything that jumped out at me in the about:config setting (type "about:config" into your browser's address window if you haven't seen this before).

The onClick method associated with the broken image looks like it will work fine. Greg just needs to upload the collapse_generic_collapsed.gif and it will show up. Another thing that's bitten me in the past - I don't know what Physics Forums is running on but, if the files are on a Unix server, the file could be there and set to not be readable. I've had it happen when uploading a file from Windows to Unix.

Borg

 

[sylas]

Greg just needs to upload the collapse_generic_collapsed.gif and it will show up.

Got it; I understand. It's a missing image.

Τhere are actually two problems here. First, the image isn't actually there. That's easily fixed, once Greg uploads the image and ensures it is readable.

The other issue is that the image tag includes alt="". This is the text that is intended to be used if the image isn't available. By having the empty string, there's nothing displayed when the image is absent! This is actually correct behaviour for a browser, I believe, and so the difficulty will most likely show up for other browsers also.

Here's a little test case:

<html><body>

<p>Original: [<img id="collapseimg_friends_mini" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN]https://www.physicsforums.com/Prime/buttons/collapse_generic_collapsed.gif"[/PLAIN] [/URL] alt="" border="0" />]</p>

<p>No Alt: [<img id="collapseimg_friends_mini" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN]https://www.physicsforums.com/Prime/buttons/collapse_generic_collapsed.gif"[/PLAIN] [/URL] border="0" />]</p>

<p>Non-empty alt: [<img id="collapseimg_friends_mini" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN]https://www.physicsforums.com/Prime/buttons/collapse_generic_collapsed.gif"[/PLAIN] [/URL] alt="expand" border="0" />]</p>

</body></html>

Here is how it appears, in Firefox, and in IE:

Interestingly, it seems to be Firefox which is doing this correctly, according to the w3schools documentation of the alt tag, here: HTML <img> alt Attribute. The documentation notes explicitly that IE handles alt incorrectly, and also notes as guidelines for use of this tag that having the empty string as alt should be used when the image is simply decoration. This makes good sense.

[strike]When correcting this, it might be worth also removing alt="" from image tags which are more than merely decoration, just to be safe if images ever do go missing again.[/strike] Corrected in edit. Actually, this would be the wrong thing to do. XHTML requires an alt tag. The correct thing to do is actually get a real alt tag with any image, with suitably chosen text. Empty text is only appropriate in images where you don't mind if nothing is displayed in cases where the image cannot be rendered, for any reason.

Just something to consider in your copious free time, guys...

Again, thanks. Not only can I resolve the problem; but I've learned a lot. Ta muchly -- sylas

 

[Borg]

Interestingly, it seems to be Firefox which is doing this correctly, according to the w3schools documentation of the alt tag, here: HTML <img> alt Attribute. The documentation notes explicitly that IE handles alt incorrectly, and also notes as guidelines for use of this tag that having the empty string as alt should be used when the image is simply decoration. This makes good sense.

HTML <img> alt Attribute
Note: Internet Explorer displays the value of the alt attribute as a tooltip when mousing over the img element. This is NOT the correct behavior, according to the HTML specification. All other browsers are following the specification, and will only display the alt text if the image cannot be displayed.

Ah, I've learned something new as well. Because of Microsoft's implementation, I thought that the ALT tag was just for mouseover text. The ALT tag name makes so much more sense now and explains why I couldn't find it in the about:config settings.

 

[Borg]

HTML <img> alt Attribute

I looked at the Browser Support section of that page and decided to play with the images that they have there. Their images are declared in the following manner which works for IE and Firefox even if the links are broken:

<img border="0" src="http://www.w3schools.com/images/compatible_ie.gif" width="31" height="30" alt="IE" title="Internet Explorer" />

I tried the following variations of broken links and only the last two (one being used on the PF link in question) don't display anything in Firefox. It would seem that Microsoft has a minimum size for a broken image and Firefox does not. BTW, the implementation above causes the alt tag to not fully display when the link is broken because they are specifying a width that is smaller than what is needed to display the tag.

<img border="0" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN][PLAIN]http://www.w3schools.com/broken/images/compatible_ie.gif" [/URL][/URL][/URL] width="31" height="30" alt="IE" title="Internet Explorer" />
<img border="0" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN][PLAIN]http://www.w3schools.com/broken/images/compatible_ie.gif" [/URL][/URL][/URL] width="31" height="30" />
<img border="0" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN][PLAIN]http://www.w3schools.com/broken/images/compatible_ie.gif" [/URL][/URL][/URL] title="Internet Explorer" />
<img border="0" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN][PLAIN]http://www.w3schools.com/broken/images/compatible_ie.gif" [/URL][/URL][/URL] alt="IE" />
<img border="0" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN][PLAIN]http://www.w3schools.com/broken/images/compatible_ie.gif" [/URL][/URL][/URL] alt="IE" title=""/>
<img border="0" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN][PLAIN]http://www.w3schools.com/broken/images/compatible_ie.gif" [/URL][/URL][/URL] />
<img border="0" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN][PLAIN]http://www.w3schools.com/broken/images/compatible_ie.gif" [/URL][/URL][/URL] alt=""/>
<img border="0" src="[PLAIN][PLAIN][PLAIN]http://www.w3schools.com/broken/images/compatible_ie.gif" [/URL][/URL][/URL] alt="" title=""/>

It also looks like IE is using the ALT tag as a backup to the title if the title doesn't exist. They probably consider it a 'feature'.

Edit: I tested the above with IE 6.0.29 and Firefox 3.5.1.

 

[Redbelly98]

Aaaargh, I've had this problem for a few days now and have finally gotten around to finding this old thread that I only vaguely remembered.

Sylas,

It's a cookie setting. Go into your Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Show Cookies. Find the PhysicsForums cookies and open them up. There will be one called "vbulletin_collapse". Deleting that cookie will restore all of your collapsed panels.

Cheers,
Borg

Thank you Borg for posting that, and thanks to Sylas for having brought this up. I am now subscribed to this thread, and moved it to my folder of useful threads.