GIF not drawing sometimes.

I have been merging my two websites and basically redoing a lot of the stuff. I have come across a funny little problem.

The top edge, bottom edge and the two side edges are frames. I have the frames set up to draw, and repeat, a tiny .GIF file in these borders. The .GIF is 16 x 1 pixels.

9 times out of 10 it works fine, but sometimes it "misses" one of the edges, (just draws a white rectangle). Usually only one edge is missing, and which, would seem to be random.

The corner pieces are also .GIF's but larger, 16 x 16. I've never seen these miss, and all the site contents draw fine, including some other small .GIF's used as vertical and horizontal dividers which are 24 x 1. I can make the edge .GIF's bigger of course, but I can't see why I should have to.

Any insights anyone? (IE 6, SP1 and other patches).

Are you hosting the site yourself, or through a company? Also, do you have a link so that we can see the problem for ourselves?

The two old sites were hosted and the hosts became a pain, so I have Apache running here now, but I don't need to publish the page to see the effect, simply opening the .html file with IE does it.

My firewall is not yet configured to pass http traffic so you can't come to the site yet, but next time it happens, I'll paste up a picture.

Ok, i have to go to class and junk now, if its not fixed before i get home i'll have a looksy.

Try clearing your browsers cache, I've found similar problems even on this site (eg the envelope icons don't always display).

These two pictures show the effect.

... and ...

Notice both edge components using the small left edge .GIF are missing in the second. The top edge is drawn correctly. I have six different colour schemas, all show the same problem sometimes! Resizing does not cause the missing .GIF to appear, but press refresh and there it is.

Hammer: I'll try that.

heh... I see your problem. You're not using Opera. :p

No, seriously.... that's weird. Is it just those gifs or is the rest of your display freaking out too?

Adrian, this happens always? this happens only in IE? did you try in Opera, Mozilla or another browser?

>>> Is it just those gifs or is the rest of your display freaking out too?

Just those 4 .GIF's everything else is fine. If you look at the pictures, the corner pieces, and the piece where the horizontal divider joins the edge are correct, they are .GIF's, the horizontal divider is also 24 x 1 .GIF repeated as many times as is necessary, that always works too. It is only the extreme edge pieces.

>>> Adrian, this happens always?

No. It happens about 1 in 10 draws.

>>> only in IE? did you try in Opera, Mozilla or another browser?

I only have IE, but if that is the problem, then I'll need to do it another way anyway. What is the point of a site which doesn't display right in one of the most popular browsers out there?

> What is the point of a site which doesn't display right in one of the most popular browsers out there?

True, but make sure that your site doesn't *only* display correctly in IE, once you get it working. It's frustrating for those of us using other browsers to get goofy pages because someone decided to do something IE-only.

>>I only have IE, but if that is the problem, then I'll need to do it another way anyway. What is the point of a site which doesn't display right in one of the most popular browsers out there?
<<

That's not my point. I just want to understand if the problem is in the source code of your page, if it works in Mozilla, so it's problem in the source code, and without seeing him, I can't help you too much, maybe you could upload the file somewhere, where we can see the code.

>>True, but make sure that your site doesn't *only* display correctly in IE, once you get it working. It's frustrating for those of us using other browsers to get goofy pages because someone decided to do something IE-only.
<<

Well, to make a site 100% compatible with any browser that supports w3.org, easy, just develop him to Opera, and alone, all the site will work on ANY browser that works under w3. This is what I always do when I develop my sites, I like this way, haven't problem like, "your site don't work in mozilla blah blah".

Cheez:

Yeah, I know. Thing is, I would seem to be using bog standard stuff here, so it should work on any reasonably up to date browser, (frame enabled).

I think if I make the .GIF bigger, like the corner pieces which display correctly every time, the fault might disappear, but I'd like to know why that should be necessary.

Vber:

I'll see if I can put together a minimal page which shows the faults then zip the bits together and upload it.

Why use frames? Why not tables? (design question, rather than solving your probem!)

>>Why use frames? Why not tables? (design question, rather than solving your probem!)

Well, sometimes is better to use frames, if he wants to change the content from the table on the fly, not reloading all the page, well in frames I just changer their src, but if he is using frame for design, like the location of the things, table is extremely better for make that, and it's easy too, tables supports percents too.

Here is a blank page with a simple border around it. Oddly, I have not had this page show the fault yet, but maybe there is something screamingly obvious in there anyway. Put all the files into a directory and load "TopLevel.html".

Hammer:

I cleared out the cache - have seen the problem later.

>>> Why use frames? Why not tables?

I guess I find it easier, especially when using a navigation frame, I can just target the "display" window with whatever someone clicks in the "nav" window".

What's wrong with using a frame?

>>I guess I find it easier, especially when using a navigation frame, I can just target the "display" window with whatever someone clicks in the "nav" window".
<<

What I told you, when talking about navigation, it's really really better, for changing within links you simply use target="frmName" and if you are scripting access it from the DOM and change the src, by: document.all['frmName'] //just IE, document.layers['frmName'] //just NS or simply by document.frmName :)

>>What's wrong with using a frame?
Nothing, most of the browsers today supports frames, even lynx.

Ahh the about your page, I can't see any serious error there, I'm still searching.

>>What's wrong with using a frame?
Only that it makes it harder for people to bookmark pages within your site, and IIRC, search engines can 1) get confused and not see your *real* pages, and 2) link directly to a *real* page so when a user loads it there are no frames. Scripting can get round some of these problems, but that's extra hassle.

Personally, I use frames on my Intranet site at work, simply because its was easier at the time, and as Vber says, doesn't require the user to reload the menu type part each time. In that environment it suits me nicely. From what I can gather, the use of frames is another one of those endless topics that covered in enormous amounts, and all boils down to personal preference. If I was building an internet site though, I'd probably try to do it with tables instead.

>>I cleared out the cache - have seen the problem later.
Oh well, worth a try. I have Mozilla at home, if no one else has tried your stuff on there (or fixed the problem), I'll do so tonight and let you know.

Hammer, some of your words are correct, I agree with you in one thing, when talking about design and using frames, it's waste of time, but if we're talking about frames that will change all the program (like a central frame to receive any new pages the user choose to go) this is EXTREMELY needed, and in this case I use IFrame.

>>that it makes it harder for people to bookmark pages within your site

read this

>>Scripting can get round some of these problems
Correct, most of what you wrote can be corrected by few line of js.

Adrian, not that this is a great solution, but have you tried converting the images to another format? Jpgs? pngs? I don't know why it would matter, but maybe it's the actual type of file that IE doesn't like.

All of the other simple frame elements, (there are a lot of them), are .GIF's and work fine, it is only the extreme edge pieces which show the problem. I use .GIF's because, (as long as you are using the 0369cf palette - I am), they are the smallest I can produce, therefore should be the fastest to download, and the colours don't get screwed around with, which happens with jpg.

As I've said, I believe, I haven't tried yet, that if I make them say 16 x 16, they will work, (all the other 16 x 16's work). I just cannot see why they should not work as they are.

Adrian, your page is not giving me any problem, actually, the only problem is displaying the page in Mozilla, I see white borders everywhere where contains frame. I'm not sure but this is your problem?

In IE it works well at least.