Fix Neowin's CSS


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I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, but a search didn't reveal anything.

The current style of Neowin I know has now been around for quite sometime, but I recall someone else pointing out that the CSS/Style of this site has a glitch which means on mobile phones or slower internet connections, all the text is unreadable as it's black on dark blue (the default background colour), until the white background has finally loaded - which is always the last thing.

Basically, whoever made the CSS never really tested it on a slower connection.

It's a pain, on Android and iPhones accessing Neowin on anything less than 3G means I avoid the site as I may have to wait what feels like a minute for the white background to load, so I can finally read the articles.

This fix would take a matter of seconds!

Any chance it will ever be fixed?

update: example attached.

Browsers affected: iPhone, Android, Symbian, FF3.5, Saf4, G1,IE8 (basically most browsers)

post-102926-1252222678_thumb.jpg

Edited by Exosphere
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Use the mobile site for mobile phones. As for using an actual computer, the image should get cached.

Sounds a good idea, I'd never heard of it, nor can I find it - care to share?

It's certainly not available on the Android Market as far as I can see.

Anyway, wouldn't a 30 second fix to the CSS code here be quicker?

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Sounds a good idea, I'd never heard of it, nor can I find it - care to share?

It's certainly not available on the Android Market as far as I can see.

Anyway, wouldn't a 30 second fix to the CSS code here be quicker?

At the bottom left of the every page is a style selector. Mine says Finity because that's the theme I'm using. Switch it to Neowin Mobile, and you'll get the mobile site. I do this on my iPod touch and don't have any problems. :)

As for the other issue, are the images caching for you? That should speed things up past the initial load.

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At the bottom left of the every page is a style selector. Mine says Finity because that's the theme I'm using. Switch it to Neowin Mobile, and you'll get the mobile site. I do this on my iPod touch and don't have any problems. :)

As for the other issue, are the images caching for you? That should speed things up past the initial load.

Ahhhh, all these years I've been visiting Neowin, I never noticed that tucked away down there.

That's a fix for me sorted, thanks MasterC

But what about the casual visitor, it doesn't look good for them, especially as the site is loading so slow these days (see other threads discussing server speed). I think it should be considered ASAP.

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Ahhhh, all these years I've been visiting Neowin, I never noticed that tucked away down there.

That's a fix for me sorted, thanks MasterC

No problem, glad I could help. (Y)

But what about the casual visitor, it doesn't look good for them, especially as the site is loading so slow these days (see other threads discussing server speed). I think it should be considered ASAP.

Well I agree that it could be fixed, but I think the devs have bigger things to worry about at the moment. I think they're working on a new version of the site, so maybe its theme won't have this problem or they might see this and try to eliminate it. :)

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Looks more like a browser issue, the colour itself isn't specified as an image, it's a plain background colour for the browser to render.

So connection speed should have no effect, if it has the CSS file (which is does since the page is styled) then it should colour it when the element appears.

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It is an image in the background. They need to back it up with a plain background colour (color) also.

this is the image that loads. https://www.neowin.net/themes/theme_images/...comments_bg.png

Which also... is too small. It would actually load quicker if the image was larger (in pixel size). At the moment, the image is one pixel wide, which the browser has to tile millions of times. If the image was wider, it would only have to tile 1000s of times.

edit : actually it is backed up with an colour.... hmmmm weird. Why does it take ages to load a colour

edit2 : the delay is caused by javascript. If I turn off script temporarily, the page loads instantly. With a white background. Can anyone narrow down the script that is causing delay. Maybe using Chrome developer tools?

Edited by lunamonkey
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The slowdown is caused by Netshelter scripts. I temporarily blocked any from netshelter in Noscript, and the page is instantly white.

Can anyone back up this claim?

Confirmed here too, block the scripts from netshelter and the page loads instantly.

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There's a combination of reasons why this occurs, and contrary to reports it's not quite a 5 minute fix. Rest assured that we appreciate the report though and we're taking this into account - we're actively working on improvements :)

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There's a combination of reasons why this occurs, and contrary to reports it's not quite a 5 minute fix. Rest assured that we appreciate the report though and we're taking this into account - we're actively working on improvements :)

Well, you're wrong, it's clearly netshelter's script that's causing the delay and the slowdown the site.

Bypass that, and the site loads very quickly and as expected.

Better still, with some minor script changes, that advert could be presented on a onload or simply have the script start later, right now the entire site stops rendering whilst that advert is being delivered.

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Well, you're wrong, it's clearly netshelter's script that's causing the delay and the slowdown the site.

Bypass that, and the site loads very quickly and as expected.

Better still, with some minor script changes, that advert could be presented on a onload or simply have the script start later, right now the entire site stops rendering whilst that advert is being delivered.

That's up to your browser and the order it chooses to load and render elements on the page. I don't have that issue here. The reason you see no background while the page loads is that there is a div at the end of the main content area that clears the floats above it. Until your browser renders that div, the content div (which the background is applied to) doesn't stretch down that far.

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That's up to your browser and the order it chooses to load and render elements on the page. I don't have that issue here.

Care to share which browser you use?

I get the problem on the following:

Safari 4.03

Firefox 3.5.2

IE 8.0

Chrome 2.0

That doesn't leave a lot of choice so I can visit Neowin without having to wait for the page to render because of an advert.

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Care to share which browser you use?

I get the problem on the following:

Safari 4.03

Firefox 3.5.2

IE 8.0

Chrome 2.0

That doesn't leave a lot of choice so I can visit Neowin without having to wait for the page to render because of an advert.

Using firefox here, but it doesn't wait for the advert before it continues rendering the page.

Your browser should render the news, then the sidebar, and then the 'clear div' that fixes the background. There's no way to make it render the 'clear div' before it has finished rendering the sidebar.

Note, that by rendering, here I'm not including loading the images/ads, this is often done later, I simply mean converting the html, applying the styles, and displaying it.

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@OP : I noticed that too while browsing on my iPhone. Hell, even on Safari 4 with my 10mbits connection. It's pretty annoying!!!

Not even a mobile version of Neowin will convince me that the bug doesn't need to be fixed. It's clearly something wrong and should be addressed ASAP. I doesn't seem to be a browser issue, as my browser is pretty much the most standard compliant one. I'm also using the very latest version of Webkit... If it happens on Firefox and Opera too, it pretty much confirms that it's wrong.

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My broadband connection often gets throttled down to 56K speeds at certain times in the month and this has been very annoying. the "Neowin Mobile" fix doesn't work for the Homepage and I find myself having to highlight all text with the cursor to be able to read it. I back up the request to have the CSS tweaked to have a lighter color specified early on in the style sheet.

edit: A little bit of poking around in neowin5_global.css suggests moving line 457 - 464 to near the top would resolve this issue.

Edited by Quick Reply
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edit: A little bit of poking around in neowin5_global.css suggests moving line 457 - 464 to near the top would resolve this issue.

Moving lines around in the CSS file will solve NOTHING. The background gets the right colour as soon as it's rendered to the page. The issue is that the background doesn't get its HEIGHT to stretch behind all the content until the last of that content is loaded, this is a side effect of using floats in the layout, the background has no height until the 'clear div' is rendered AFTER the content.

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There's a combination of reasons why this occurs, and contrary to reports it's not quite a 5 minute fix. Rest assured that we appreciate the report though and we're taking this into account - we're actively working on improvements :)

Thats good enough for me. (Y)

A fix will be nice. This issue can be annoying, but I'm glad to know you guys are working on it.

Keep up all the hard work!

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There is definitely something wrong with their script. For one... it's a script inside a script. You write the netshelter script, and then their script writes out a new script.

And there is a delay on the content because of maybe the redirect it does also...

3 seconds is taking the mickey.

post-29476-1252251130_thumb.png

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I've added some stuff to the CSS that should keep you guys happy for now :p

Makes no difference at all.

Anyway, you said yourself changing the CSS would not resolve it, and someone has already discovered the issue.

I've not come accross a site before where I've wanted to block adverts, that's not something I want to do as I'd like to support Neowin and click on those adverts at times, but I'm being forced to because the site is crawling too slow with them.

My guess is it's a routing issue on Netshelter which is why a few don't get the massive delay, and most of us here do. Why not shift those ads to the footer (they can still appear further up the page via a document.write command)

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