Upgrade Related Issues

[GeoffSmith]

..... IE is shite isn't it!

The banner and background colour of the .png graphic is R,G,B = 1,74,21. There are three different dark greens so far: Mine at work is 1,62,15, RayD's is 0,62,15 and StoneageJohn's is 0,51,10. It seems there is a known problem with IE5/6 rendering of .png files with transparency but our graphic does not appear to have any transparency set. The png palette is full 24 bit, 16 million colours and the number of unique colours in the image is only 253 but reducing the palette size (even to 64k) with PSP always changes the background colour by a few counts. Any comments to Bill.Gates@Microsoft.com.

[RayD]

Phil's comment also has a mention in the E.L.A.Ns

If you spot anything worthy, please add it here...

Ray

[John_W]

Wow, IE5!
This is going to be tough to fix for the simple reason that neither I nor Ailwyn (I suspect) have a machine old enough to run IE5 for OS9 !
Incidentally, there's a "newer" version of IE5 that you might want to try (5.2.3 vs. your 5.1.7 which is 2 years [even] older): http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Internet-U ... orer.shtml

Al,
I wouldn't bother trying to fix it - I'll just kick the kids off a computer when I want to view LEC. I just reported it because I've not seen anything like it before - and I remember Data Generals. (Thanks for the upgrade hint.)

Failing that, you could try this: http://injoydesign.com/2008/05/apple-imac-aquarium/
Doesn't really help you with your problem per se, but you might find it soothing.

Now that's really cool. And it would go to very well with my blue iMac. I feel a Margarita coming on.

As to the submittal error, I guess it's just one of those glitches you get occasionally.

StoneageJohn's is 0,51,10. It seems there is a known problem with IE5/6 rendering of .png files with transparency but our graphic does not appear to have any transparency set.

Thanks for the namecheck, Geoff. How did you work out the rgb values from just a posted picture? I agree that rendering & transparencies can't be the problem, as the banner used to display OK before the upgrade on all platforms to which I have access.
Personally, I'm not too bothered about all of the above. I just thought I's share my peculiarities.

John

[GeoffSmith]

Thanks for the namecheck, Geoff.
How did you work out the rgb values from just a posted picture?
I agree that rendering & transparencies can't be the problem, as the banner used to display OK before the upgrade on all platforms to which I have access.
Personally, I'm not too bothered about all of the above.
I just thought I's share my peculiarities.

No problem!.
Screen capture in PSP.
I agree.
Me too but I was bored at lunchtime!
NO THANK YOU!

[surfboardfiller]

When I use the link from the email notification, it takes me to the first page/post of the thread, not the post which prompted the email.

[surfboardfiller]

Can I protest at the avatar looking particularly shite. I compressed mine to 6k and it looked just about all right but now it looks awful being forced down to 2k!
The upload section said something like less then 11k What has happened?

[al]

Can I protest at the avatar looking particularly shite. I compressed mine to 6k and it looked just about all right but now it looks awful being forced down to 2k!
The upload section said something like less then 11k What has happened?

?? Your avatar is about 5k...
Limit is set to ~12k, did Ailwyn fix it already ?

[surfboardfiller]

Can I protest at the avatar looking particularly shite. I compressed mine to 6k and it looked just about all right but now it looks awful being forced down to 2k!
The upload section said something like less then 11k What has happened?

?? Your avatar is about 5k...
Limit is set to ~12k, did Ailwyn fix it already ?

That's strange, I uploaded my avatar 6k saw it looked shite downloaded from the screen and it was less than 2k!
I really don't understand what is happening Al, all the forum images are looking heavily compressed I thought it was a new site Algorithm, and if it's not LEC... would it be my service provider compressing the images?
(I have gone mobile)

[al]

(I have gone mobile)

That explains it then: Vodafone by any chance ?

They run a transparent proxy; *all* of your HTTP traffic gets intercepted by this proxy, which sits there 'optimising' your traffic by over-compressing all the graphics (you should be seeing the same degradation on all the images on all sites if you look close enough), fiddling about with the HTML and generally making life a pain for anyone who develops webapps and cares about making them accessible by phone (last time I checked, they even strip out the phone's User-Agent header so you can't even easily tell that it's a phone making the request !)

[markv]

(I have gone mobile)

That explains it then: Vodafone by any chance ?

They run a transparent proxy; *all* of your HTTP traffic gets intercepted by this proxy, which sits there 'optimising' your traffic by over-compressing all the graphics (you should be seeing the same degradation on all the images on all sites if you look close enough), fiddling about with the HTML and generally making life a pain for anyone who develops webapps and cares about making them accessible by phone (last time I checked, they even strip out the phone's User-Agent header so you can't even easily tell that it's a phone making the request !)

The same compression tricks are used by a number of products which claim to "speed-up your internet access", so if you use anything like that on a landline, be aware you can get the same sort of problems as those described above.

[surfboardfiller]

The thing that got me; was that it was fine for a while, then the site changed while I was browsing. It looked like the LEC site had just been updated and every thing turned into a jpeg night mare.

Now it's fine!? so it may be a function that comes on when the bandwidth is low (after North Enders or Pop Factor has ended). I know now I should never have doubted you Al!

It is a Vodaphone USB Stick I'm connecting with. The Che Guevara of internet access.. :twisted:

[John_W]

Since you asked ...
I am one of those who can see a darker-coloured green box around the LEC header at the top left of all forum pages

Not any more I'm not. What's happened?

On Safari, the LEC logo now appears as a smooth green at the top of all pages without the dark green box round it. It might just be that a Safari update has got rid of the problem, or it might mean that our fearless moderators have been slaving over hot keyboards for months to solve the problem and deserve many pints at Donington in recognition of their efforts.

Which is it (without fibbing)?

John

[ailwyn]

John,

Much as I like seeing a Scot buy a round of drinks (more chance of Rambo getting a haircut) , I've not done anything, so unless Al has been tinkering....

Ailwyn

[al]

You got me

I did a bit of research into the problem; all to do with colour-space and gamma information embedded in the PNG file and the interaction with various browsers and the gamma settings of various PCs... so I fixed it as best I could - won't be perfect on all combinations of platform, browser, graphics drivers, setups etc. etc., but it'll be a lot better than it used to was

Now then, did someone mention beer ?


a.

[John_W]

Al,
Good lad.
I can also confirm that my work PC (Sun running Explorer) doesn't see the dark green box any more.
Looks like you've fixed it for me Al (not counting iMac G3s running palaeo versions of IE).

As to ... I think that all you guys who keep this website going deserve a few from the rest of us at Donington next year. I hope to see you.

John


PS: just to gauge how unobservant I am, when did you do it?

[Enright]

I had to have it pointed out, so seemless was the transition!
Nice work, looks good!

[ailwyn]

I had to have it pointed out, so seemless was the transition!
Nice work, looks good!

No doubt Al transitioned it over a few days, just to avoid any shocks for our older members