List menu not displaying properly

I am having a very odd problem with a website I run. The menus have recently been changed to use javascript and some people are reporting that when they first use the site, Instead of a nicely aligned list of items each in its own light-blue box. They are seeing a straightforward <li> list with no styles.

The biggest problem is that I think it is only seen the first time someone goes to the site and so I can't see it!!!

So if anyone could just look at the site Lenzie.org.uk and report what they see (and the browser they are using) I would very very much appreciate it!!!

Question

Unless I've fixed it, the question is then: "How is it possible for a browser to load the UL list as if it hasn't seen the style sheet when as far as I can tell the style sheet is clearly visible and downloaded by any browser that can view the site?

Technical stuff

The menu is a <ul><li>.. list. The style is controlled by a css "/styles/menu.css", and then some java loads "js/menu.js" and hides all the sub-menus leaving just the main items until the mouse hovers over it. (Except on pages with frames where I have to use a very different menu layout)

Unfortunately, loading the UL list is very clunky, as the huge list appears, and only when the whole page has loaded, does the javascript kick in to tidy it up. So I now use a cookie to "decide"** if someone has javascript and If the cookie is set, the PHP code sets the div for the "visibility property of theUL list " to "hidden", which stops the enornous UL list being loaded and messing up the whole screen.

Thanks in advance!

**The logic is: If you have a cookie set, I assume you have javascript and so don't want the menu to be innitially visible - but I leave a <noscript>link where the cookie is set to "visible"

re: List menu not displaying properly

No issue this end in XP IE/6 or IE/7, nor in Mac OS X 10.4.11 latest versions Opera, Safari, SeaMonkey, Camino, and Firefox.

re: List menu not displaying properly

David,

that is about 6x more checking than I ever expected anyone to do and a tremendous relief to know that it seems to be OK (fingers crossed).

Thanks!!

re: List menu not displaying properly

Yep, works wonderfully on Chrome. I should, however, note that this website is dangerous to epileptics.

Just joking.

re: List menu not displaying properly

I've had problems in IE7 before with the a page loading completely wrong the first time. Then I hit refresh and it'd be all ok. It only happened about one in ten times (made any debugging attempts a pain). Never did figure out why. I've also seen the opposite, it loads right the first time, but if you hit refresh, it'd be all messed up. I'd say its just a sporadic IE bug and there isn't much you can do about it.

re: List menu not displaying properly

Markus ... Yep I try to keep an ironic concordance between the exciting life of this commuter village and the website. You may note that we've had our first big news in around a year ... a big puddle!

The only thing that keeps me sane is talking to myself on the forum!

BUT SERIOUSLY.

As I've no other experience with PHP, MySQL, javascript, HTML, CSS, RSS, XML, PICT, PHPPW, journalism, photo-journalism, internet-law, website publicity, security, digital photo-editing, except a few odd evenings during the last 18months ... any helpful advice (even negative comments) on styles would be much appreciated.

re: List menu not displaying properly

Keep the colours neutral and complementing. Bright colours burn my eyes. :<

But, as you're not really a web developer, we shan't grill you.

re: List menu not displaying properly

Markus ... thanks for comment, and of course, the colours were a bit slapdash yes a bright yellow box probably was out of keeping with the "Jam and Tarts" village (not that I know any tarts in the village mind you!)

So I've toned down the bright yellow box to a kind of lemon curd colour, turned the bright blue links into sombre blue-rinse tone and I've created a new style "highlight" ... which is a dull red!

I also tried turning the titles a sort of greyish colour .... but that didn't work so they are now a subtle dark-pottery colour!

Thanks!

re: List menu not displaying properly

Markus, Please Do "grill me"!

I've seen this blasted website so many times I don't see what is there anymore ... just what I think I put there. In fact, if I'm honest, I've never changed the styles from the original some 18months ago and I've only just discovered what those funny ".header tag" things are in my style sheet and now I've kind of worked out how to change a style in one section of one page without affecting every other section of every other page.

Then yesterday I discovered that changing the document type changed the styles ... not to mention IE!

I suppose what I really ought to have is a separate style sheet for each of the sections of the page with a " .contents h1 {color:dazzle-yellow;}" and ".games h1 {color: starburst101-yellow;}

... which reminds me, is there a difference between using a class tag and an id tag in the way the properties are inherited, interpreted, (botched by IE)

re: List menu not displaying properly

It's looking better, actually. The Latest link color isn't so blinding. I'd try and keep the colors on your page to a maximum of 3. I'd change the menu on the left so the colors are something like the Latest link's color. Just my input.

re: List menu not displaying properly

Oh dear, perhaps I should have read that earlier. I've just spent ages tidying up all the colours with the result ... it looks almost identical (It took me ages to find a colour scheme that was almost identical to the one I was already using!)

But if you really want a colourist to have a heart attack have a look at lenzie Kidz ... or come to think about it everyone would have a fright between 12pm-1am (British Time) because our site seems to be haunted! (till Sun 2nd Nov)

But seriously thanks for the comments.

3 colours? ummmm .... once you've including a colour for links, one for highlighted links and one for text - isn't it just a tad limiting to only allow three colours? ... Which one do you use for the background? (what I mean is what do you mean by a colour?)