On Apr 5, 2:00 pm, Lars Eighner <use...@larseighner.com> wrote:
> In our last episode,
> <1ac205db-da41-430a-83ad-768d82ab2...@x41g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>, the
> lovely and talented JGW1 broadcast on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
>
> > I have recently changed the design ofwww.trec-uk.org.ukto make more
> > use of tables so that text is contained within fixed-width areas.
> > Since I have made the change, a new problem has appeared. It quite
> > often happens that, when a page is first loaded, the banner heading
> > for the page is shown half way down the screen and then, after about a
> > second, it jumps to its proper position at the top of the screen. Once
> > the page has been cached, this does not happen.
> > Can anyone suggest the reason for this problem and how it may be
> > cured?
>
> First, you did not declare a DOCTYPE. Chose a DOCTYPE and validate you
> document against it. The abscence of a DOCTYPE causes the browser to treat
> your document as "tag soup" --- which given your mix of deprecated
> attributes, deprecated elements, and table makeup is probably an accurate
> description of what you have got. In any event, in "tag soup" (aka "quirks"
> mode), your browser will not trust your document until it has downloaded all
> of the parts. You may have a valid Transitional document, but without the
> DOCTYPE neither I nor the browser can tell what you are aiming at.
>
> (Well, opps, no you do not. You have 32 errors even with the Transitional
> DTD.)
>
> When the browser is set to show pages while downloading, instead of only
> when the when the page is completely received.
>
> Typically, the browser will begin downloading several of the source files at
> once and will start displaying the various graphics etc. as it receives
> them.[1] But if the browser does not know how much space to allocate for an
> element above or how big a graphic, etc. is going to be or doesn't really
> trust the document because it is in quirks mode, its placement of the things
> it is showing during downloading is just a guess. It cannot make up the
> page in its final form until the loading is complete.
>
> [1] Display while downloading can be turned of in many/most/all browsers,
> but of course you cannot count on users having it turned off in their
> browsers especially as it is usually on by default.
>
> --
> Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> use...@larseighner.com
> Countdown: 290 days to go.

Many thanks!

Gerry