Computer Help and Support

steve2470

(37,457 posts) Thu Apr 17, 2014, 05:31 PM Apr 2014

question about browser oddity

Last edited Fri Apr 18, 2014, 06:32 AM - Edit history (2)

I've been using the Otter browser on DU for kicks. It's still in alpha.

One annoying thing about Otter was the fact that there was always a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of every page, no matter how far out I zoomed. Now it's gone...for no reason I can think of. Just a bug in Otter I assume ?

eta: I searched Github for bugs and found nothing like it.

eta2: Now the bug is back. Quite odd.

17 replies

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question about browser oddity (Original Post) steve2470 Apr 2014 OP

joined Github, reported issue here steve2470 Apr 2014 #1

I would suspect it's their handling of the following rule in the DU stylesheet: Make7 Apr 2014 #2

if you can walk me through it steve2470 Apr 2014 #3

When I create the following two html files and open them in FireFox... Make7 Apr 2014 #4

results steve2470 Apr 2014 #5

It looks like maybe Otter won't open local files. Make7 Apr 2014 #6

Firefox opens them both perfectly with no error messages steve2470 Apr 2014 #7

Otter opens local files if you add the 'file:///' at the beginning. Make7 Apr 2014 #8

hm that's strange steve2470 Apr 2014 #9

update steve2470 Apr 2014 #10

emdek, the main programmer, verified it on Github, fwiw steve2470 Apr 2014 #11

That makes sense. I didn't change the zoom setting, so I never saw the issue. Make7 Apr 2014 #12

thanks for that tip ! nt steve2470 Apr 2014 #13

btw, if you're interested in the latest (12.17) version of classic Opera.... steve2470 Apr 2014 #14

Thanks. I have 12.16 installed already, so it's possible to just update through that. Make7 Apr 2014 #15

thanks again for those tips and your help ! :) nt steve2470 Apr 2014 #16

new Otter out, horizontal scroll bar gone so far steve2470 May 2014 #17

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

1. joined Github, reported issue here

Reply to steve2470 (Original post)

Fri Apr 18, 2014, 05:55 PM

Apr 2014

https://github.com/Emdek/otter/issues/254

For some reason, Otter does not like DU. All other browsers do, so it needs to be fixed by their team.

Make7

(8,543 posts)

2. I would suspect it's their handling of the following rule in the DU stylesheet:

Reply to steve2470 (Original post)

Fri Apr 18, 2014, 06:49 PM

Apr 2014

[div class="excerpt" style="display:inline-block; margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #999999 inset;"]html {
overflow-y: scroll;
}

Easy enough to check with a couple of test html files. (If you're that curious.)

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

3. if you can walk me through it

Reply to Make7 (Reply #2)

Fri Apr 18, 2014, 06:51 PM

Apr 2014

I'm not a software guy, so I need to be told exactly what to do. Thanks, if you have the time and patience.

Make7

(8,543 posts)

4. When I create the following two html files and open them in FireFox...

Reply to steve2470 (Reply #3)

Fri Apr 18, 2014, 07:49 PM

Apr 2014

... the one with the <style> section has an inactive vertical scroll bar on the right side of the window, the one with no <style> declarations has no scroll bars at all. I'm just thinking that Otter might also be putting a horizontal scroll bar on that first page.

Just copy the text below into Notepad and save as .html files (Save As... Save As Type: All Files *.* and give it an html file extension.) Name one something like scroll_test.html and the other no_scroll.html. (I am assuming Otter will open a local html file.)

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #999999 inset;"]<html>
<head>
<title>
scroll test
</title>
<style>
html {overflow-y: scroll;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p>
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
</p>
</body>
</html>
[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #999999 inset;"]<html>
<head>
<title>
no scroll
</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
</p>
</body>
</html>
Open both files in Otter and see what (if any) scroll bars are displayed.

A more robust test would be to save a DU page as a Web Page, complete html file in FireFox and then modify the saved main CSS file until the vertical scroll bar goes away (assuming Otter would open the saved file(s) the same way as FireFox). It is most likely an overflow declaration making the horizontal scroll bar appear.

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

5. results

Reply to Make7 (Reply #4)

Fri Apr 18, 2014, 07:56 PM

Apr 2014

The top batch of code, saved as scroll_test.html, gave me this error message:

Error 301
Protocol "c" is unknown

******************************************************************

The bottom batch of code, saved as no_scroll.html, gave me the same error message.

Did I make a mistake ?

Make7

(8,543 posts)

6. It looks like maybe Otter won't open local files.

Reply to steve2470 (Reply #5)

Fri Apr 18, 2014, 08:10 PM

Apr 2014

Seems like it's trying to interpret your drive letter (c:\) as a protocol (e.g. http://, ftp://, ...).

You could try putting file:// or file:/// in front of the file path of the local files in the browser URL field.

Maybe if I get bored this weekend, I'll install Otter and play with it a little.

To see if you saved the html files properly, you could open them in FireFox.

Otter isn't even in Beta release yet, so there's probably a lot of stuff that's not completed yet.

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

7. Firefox opens them both perfectly with no error messages

Reply to Make7 (Reply #6)

Fri Apr 18, 2014, 08:13 PM

Apr 2014

It even shows the " file:/// " protocol in the address bar.

I'm thinking Otter has a long ways to go.

Make7

(8,543 posts)

8. Otter opens local files if you add the 'file:///' at the beginning.

Reply to steve2470 (Reply #7)

Sat Apr 19, 2014, 05:59 PM

Apr 2014

I couldn't recreate the horizontal scroll bar issue - browsed at little bit on DU and never saw a horizontal scroll bar appear once.

There are quite a few things greyed out in the menus and context menus in Otter - like the Website Preferences which is one of the things I liked best about Opera. The cookie management still isn't finished, yet another feature that Opera did best way back when. I'll have to check it out when it's further along to see what they decided to do.

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

9. hm that's strange

Reply to Make7 (Reply #8)

Sat Apr 19, 2014, 06:03 PM

Apr 2014

Right now I have the horizontal scroll bar, despite being zoomed out. I've never used QT before. Could I have installed that wrong ? (eta: I re-read the instructions, you only use QT if installing from source. I'm using the latest alpha binary.)

eta: I'm on Win8.1 Update x64, if that makes any difference.

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

10. update

Reply to Make7 (Reply #8)

Sat Apr 19, 2014, 06:55 PM

Apr 2014

I deleted all my old otter files and redownloaded otter. Right now there is NO horizontal scroll bar. *knock on wood*

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

11. emdek, the main programmer, verified it on Github, fwiw

Reply to Make7 (Reply #2)

Tue Apr 22, 2014, 10:10 AM

Apr 2014

Emdek commented 18 hours ago

It seems to be some more generic issue, I've seen it few times before.
It appears to be somehow triggered by use of zoom and looks like issue with size of viewport, not related to displayed content - after navigating away it stays the same way.

https://github.com/Emdek/otter/issues/254

Make7

(8,543 posts)

12. That makes sense. I didn't change the zoom setting, so I never saw the issue.

Reply to steve2470 (Reply #11)

Tue Apr 22, 2014, 10:46 AM

Apr 2014

And you "fixed" it by reinstalling - which reset the zoom setting.

Although if it only seemed to happen on DU for you, there might be something making this site more inclined to manifest the problem. I'm still thinking that defining a CSS rule to set overflow/scrolling in the <html> tag of a page is a bit unconventional - although it is probably unrelated to this Otter viewing anomaly.

[hr]
By the way, regarding your image question in ATA: http://www.democraticunderground.com/12595661#op

It is the exclamation point in the image URL causing it not to display - replace it with its URL encode equivalent: %21.

[div class="excerpt" style="color:#000066; margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #999999 inset;"]http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1434739.1377260575[font style="color:#000000; background-color:#99ccff;"]![/font]/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_1200/beau-biden-hospitalized.jpg

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1434739.1377260575[font style="color:#000000; background-color:#99ccff;"]%21[/font]/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_1200/beau-biden-hospitalized.jpg

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

13. thanks for that tip ! nt

Reply to Make7 (Reply #12)

Tue Apr 22, 2014, 11:12 AM

Apr 2014

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

14. btw, if you're interested in the latest (12.17) version of classic Opera....

Reply to Make7 (Reply #12)

Tue Apr 22, 2014, 05:47 PM

Apr 2014

ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/win/

it's at that address above, under folder 1217 of course. My guess is they are allowing the programmers to work on it off-duty.

Make7

(8,543 posts)

15. Thanks. I have 12.16 installed already, so it's possible to just update through that.

Reply to steve2470 (Reply #14)

Tue Apr 22, 2014, 07:52 PM

Apr 2014

Although, I doubt they are changing features - probably just bug fixes, stability issues, and security concerns at this point (the old Opera will probably be abandoned altogether soon).

I can't remember when they started "simplifying" things, but they broke the advanced cookie handling quite a while ago (version 10.something I think). They also used to have the fastest JavaScript engine, but everyone caught up a long time ago. Add in the fact that Silverlight wouldn't work, and I started using FireFox more and more until now it's my default. I think out of all of the current browsers, it allows the most customization - which was pretty much why I used Opera back in its heyday.
[div style="height:1.2em; width:100%; border-bottom:1px solid #bfbfbf;"]
A little more on DU3 image embedding and issues with non-alphanumeric characters. The characters that break normal webpage links here also break images (see the table of those characters in my post about link problems here). The characters that will stop images from embedding and turn the URL into a link are: commas, exclamation points, and plus signs. Use their URL encode equivalent (%2C, %21, %2B respectively) to fix that. (I might be missing some characters, but those are the ones most likely to be present in a web address.)

I also glanced at your old ATA thread about a different image issue - addresses that don't end with jpg, png, or gif. Oddly enough, if the link goes to an actual image file (and not some html wrapper), you can often just add any of the image extensions that work here to make the images embed. For example:

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #999999 inset;"]http://www.trbimg.com/img-53301dae/turbine/lat-la-obama-amsterdam-wre0016323969-20140324/600

http://www.trbimg.com/img-53301dae/turbine/lat-la-obama-amsterdam-wre0016323969-20140324/600.jpg
http://www.trbimg.com/img-53301dae/turbine/lat-la-obama-amsterdam-wre0016323969-20140324/600.png
http://www.trbimg.com/img-53301dae/turbine/lat-la-obama-amsterdam-wre0016323969-20140324/600.gif
Using any of the bottom three in a post will give you a picture for that particular image address. (Although it's easy enough to just upload the file to an image server - that way you know it won't suddenly stop working if the originating website changes how they serve up their media.)

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

16. thanks again for those tips and your help ! :) nt

Reply to Make7 (Reply #15)

Tue Apr 22, 2014, 09:06 PM

Apr 2014

steve2470

(37,457 posts)

17. new Otter out, horizontal scroll bar gone so far

Reply to steve2470 (Original post)

Sat May 3, 2014, 06:59 AM

May 2014

Last edited Sat May 3, 2014, 11:14 AM - Edit history (1)

Congrats Emdek !

new download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/otter-browser/files/otter-browser-alpha5/

eta: spoke too soon, bar is back.

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