I'm having trouble with the appearance of and, in some instances, gaining access to various links on the WP site. The same thing is happening on the Wiktionary site. This just started happening this morning. Every page I go to has very large type. And the WP globe, as well as the boxes underneath it, are superimposed over the entire page. I don't know where else to go with this problem. I tried getting to the various "Help" pages but the same thing happens. Not only is the appearance of the page a mess, but clicking on the various Links doesn't work. Any suggestions? This situation, in addition to making it very difficult to read a page, makes it impossible for me to edit any.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Marc Riddell
On 10 July 2010 18:10, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I'm having trouble with the appearance of and, in some instances, gaining access to various links on the WP site. The same thing is happening on the Wiktionary site. This just started happening this morning. Every page I go to has very large type. And the WP globe, as well as the boxes underneath it, are superimposed over the entire page. I don't know where else to go with this problem. I tried getting to the various "Help" pages but the same thing happens. Not only is the appearance of the page a mess, but clicking on the various Links doesn't work. Any suggestions? This situation, in addition to making it very difficult to read a page, makes it impossible for me to edit any. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sounds like something blew the page display up to unusable size. What web browser are you using? In most except Internet Explorer, Control-0 (zero) will make stuff normal size again.
- d.
on 7/10/10 1:20 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10 July 2010 18:10, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I'm having trouble with the appearance of and, in some instances, gaining access to various links on the WP site. The same thing is happening on the Wiktionary site. This just started happening this morning. Every page I go to has very large type. And the WP globe, as well as the boxes underneath it, are superimposed over the entire page. I don't know where else to go with this problem. I tried getting to the various "Help" pages but the same thing happens. Not only is the appearance of the page a mess, but clicking on the various Links doesn't work. Any suggestions? This situation, in addition to making it very difficult to read a page, makes it impossible for me to edit any. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sounds like something blew the page display up to unusable size. What web browser are you using? In most except Internet Explorer, Control-0 (zero) will make stuff normal size again.
Thank you for your response, David. Unfortunately, I am using Internet Explorer. :-(
Marc
Try pressing Ctrl and - (the minus key) to reduce the size.
-Josh
On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
on 7/10/10 1:20 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10 July 2010 18:10, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I'm having trouble with the appearance of and, in some instances,
gaining
access to various links on the WP site. The same thing is happening on
the
Wiktionary site. This just started happening this morning. Every page I
go
to has very large type. And the WP globe, as well as the boxes
underneath
it, are superimposed over the entire page. I don't know where else to go with this problem. I tried getting to the various "Help" pages but the
same
thing happens. Not only is the appearance of the page a mess, but
clicking
on the various Links doesn't work. Any suggestions? This situation, in addition to making it very difficult to read a page, makes it impossible
for
me to edit any. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sounds like something blew the page display up to unusable size. What web browser are you using? In most except Internet Explorer, Control-0 (zero) will make stuff normal size again.
Thank you for your response, David. Unfortunately, I am using Internet Explorer. :-(
Marc
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
on 7/10/10 1:33 PM, Joshua Scott at joshua.scott@gmail.com wrote:
Try pressing Ctrl and - (the minus key) to reduce the size.
-Josh
Thanks, Josh. I tried what you suggested but nothing changed. And this is strange. I've been using Internet Explorer with the same skin (MonoBook) ever since I started editing WP four years ago without a problem. I realize that the IE version I'm still using is an older one which I plan to replace soon. But suddenly, yesterday, the whole WP site's appearance changed. What's really annoying, in addition to the large text, is the WP globe logo and the box beneath it bring superimposed over everything. I have changed to the Vector skin and it has solved most of the problems; but there is no "watch this page" button in sight. I visit and interact with many different web sites over the course of a day without any problems. WP is the only one where this appearance issue occurs. Frustrating :-(.
Marc
On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
on 7/10/10 1:20 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10 July 2010 18:10, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I'm having trouble with the appearance of and, in some instances,
gaining
access to various links on the WP site. The same thing is happening on
the
Wiktionary site. This just started happening this morning. Every page I
go
to has very large type. And the WP globe, as well as the boxes
underneath
it, are superimposed over the entire page. I don't know where else to go with this problem. I tried getting to the various "Help" pages but the
same
thing happens. Not only is the appearance of the page a mess, but
clicking
on the various Links doesn't work. Any suggestions? This situation, in addition to making it very difficult to read a page, makes it impossible
for
me to edit any. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sounds like something blew the page display up to unusable size. What web browser are you using? In most except Internet Explorer, Control-0 (zero) will make stuff normal size again.
Thank you for your response, David. Unfortunately, I am using Internet Explorer. :-(
Marc
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 11 July 2010 13:33, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Thanks, Josh. I tried what you suggested but nothing changed. And this is strange. I've been using Internet Explorer with the same skin (MonoBook) ever since I started editing WP four years ago without a problem. I realize that the IE version I'm still using is an older one which I plan to replace soon. But suddenly, yesterday, the whole WP site's appearance changed. What's really annoying, in addition to the large text, is the WP globe logo and the box beneath it bring superimposed over everything. I have changed to the Vector skin and it has solved most of the problems; but there is no "watch this page" button in sight. I visit and interact with many different web sites over the course of a day without any problems. WP is the only one where this appearance issue occurs. Frustrating :-(.
There should be a "Toolbox" thing with a little triangle in it at the side. Clicking the triangle will expand it.
(Apparently, this is obvious to everyone.)
- d.
on 7/11/10 8:43 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 11 July 2010 13:33, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Thanks, Josh. I tried what you suggested but nothing changed. And this is strange. I've been using Internet Explorer with the same skin (MonoBook) ever since I started editing WP four years ago without a problem. I realize that the IE version I'm still using is an older one which I plan to replace soon. But suddenly, yesterday, the whole WP site's appearance changed. What's really annoying, in addition to the large text, is the WP globe logo and the box beneath it bring superimposed over everything. I have changed to the Vector skin and it has solved most of the problems; but there is no "watch this page" button in sight. I visit and interact with many different web sites over the course of a day without any problems. WP is the only one where this appearance issue occurs. Frustrating :-(.
There should be a "Toolbox" thing with a little triangle in it at the side. Clicking the triangle will expand it.
(Apparently, this is obvious to everyone.)
It is obvious to me, also, David. However the "Toolbox" button is a part of the stuff that is still superimposed over the main body of text. And it is not a usable link.
Marc
On 11 July 2010 14:07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 7/11/10 8:43 AM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
There should be a "Toolbox" thing with a little triangle in it at the side. Clicking the triangle will expand it. (Apparently, this is obvious to everyone.)
It is obvious to me, also, David. However the "Toolbox" button is a part of the stuff that is still superimposed over the main body of text. And it is not a usable link.
Ah, so the layout is completely broken? Tch.
Do you know what version of IE you're using? I think the developers basically decided
On 11 July 2010 14:33, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Ah, so the layout is completely broken? Tch. Do you know what version of IE you're using? I think the developers basically decided
... to stop supporting old IE because it was ridiculously difficult to do so. However, it *should* be possible to detect the old IE version and give a simpler skin.
(I believe en:wp is also still completely broken for many BlackBerry users - the Vector skin actually crashes their browser.)
- d.
on 7/10/10 1:31 PM, Marc Riddell at michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 7/10/10 1:20 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10 July 2010 18:10, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I'm having trouble with the appearance of and, in some instances, gaining access to various links on the WP site. The same thing is happening on the Wiktionary site. This just started happening this morning. Every page I go to has very large type. And the WP globe, as well as the boxes underneath it, are superimposed over the entire page. I don't know where else to go with this problem. I tried getting to the various "Help" pages but the same thing happens. Not only is the appearance of the page a mess, but clicking on the various Links doesn't work. Any suggestions? This situation, in addition to making it very difficult to read a page, makes it impossible for me to edit any. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sounds like something blew the page display up to unusable size. What web browser are you using? In most except Internet Explorer, Control-0 (zero) will make stuff normal size again.
Thank you for your response, David. Unfortunately, I am using Internet Explorer. :-(
David, I was able to solve the problem by switching from MonoBook to the Vector skin - even my geriatric Explorer seems to support that :-). It's not as nice looking, but I can at least read it & edit the articles on it. Thanks.
Marc
On 10 July 2010 18:10, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I'm having trouble with the appearance of and, in some instances, gaining access to various links on the WP site. The same thing is happening on the Wiktionary site. This just started happening this morning. Every page I go to has very large type. And the WP globe, as well as the boxes underneath it, are superimposed over the entire page. I don't know where else to go with this problem. I tried getting to the various "Help" pages but the same thing happens. Not only is the appearance of the page a mess, but clicking on the various Links doesn't work. Any suggestions? This situation, in addition to making it very difficult to read a page, makes it impossible for me to edit any.
As said by others, it's probably a page-zoom issue:
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsvista/webtext.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsvista/webzoom.aspx
(for IE - other browsers, look at View > Zoom or similar menus)
What's interesting here is that whilst it seems like a once-off problem, this actually happens a lot. I've seen five or six versions of this complaint via OTRS - a user has resized their font size or default zoom for Wikipedia by accident, is worried, and wants to know how to fix it.
Now, in every case I've been able to track down to the root cause, the user has apparently (accidentally) set text size themselves; it's not that we've reset it, so we can (probably) rule that out.
But why is it we get these issues? Three possibilities leap out at me:
a) it actually happens fairly randomly across all sites, but people tend to come back to Wikipedia, so that while it may seem a once-off problem on a site you only visit once, it seems systematic for us.
b) We're easily contactable, so people do write to us to ask about it rather than just throwing up their hands over it - a perception bias on my part
c) There's something about the *way* people use Wikipedia that leads to this.
I'm tending towards c) - page zoom can often be altered by things like mouse-wheel scrolling, which you get a lot when moving through long pages, of which we obviously have plenty. But I'd be interested if anyone has any other explanations for the phenomenon, and if we ought to feed this back to someone in the usability groups.
I encountered something similar recently (in the sense that it was the GUI playing up). I would load pages and would immediately be taken to the bottom of the page and kind of bounce up and down there rapidly (if you know what I mean). I think I traced it to my mouse having been pressed up against something and a button being pressed down without me realising it!
Of course, many things are screwy about keyboard shortcut designs. Whose bright idea was it to put Ctl-X, Ctl-C and Ctl-V next to each other on the keyboard? Press those in the wrong order, or slip and hit the wrong key, and you can easily lose stuff!
Carcharoth
On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 12:56 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
On 10 July 2010 18:10, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I'm having trouble with the appearance of and, in some instances, gaining access to various links on the WP site. The same thing is happening on the Wiktionary site. This just started happening this morning. Every page I go to has very large type. And the WP globe, as well as the boxes underneath it, are superimposed over the entire page. I don't know where else to go with this problem. I tried getting to the various "Help" pages but the same thing happens. Not only is the appearance of the page a mess, but clicking on the various Links doesn't work. Any suggestions? This situation, in addition to making it very difficult to read a page, makes it impossible for me to edit any.
As said by others, it's probably a page-zoom issue:
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsvista/webtext.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsvista/webzoom.aspx
(for IE - other browsers, look at View > Zoom or similar menus)
What's interesting here is that whilst it seems like a once-off problem, this actually happens a lot. I've seen five or six versions of this complaint via OTRS - a user has resized their font size or default zoom for Wikipedia by accident, is worried, and wants to know how to fix it.
Now, in every case I've been able to track down to the root cause, the user has apparently (accidentally) set text size themselves; it's not that we've reset it, so we can (probably) rule that out.
But why is it we get these issues? Three possibilities leap out at me:
a) it actually happens fairly randomly across all sites, but people tend to come back to Wikipedia, so that while it may seem a once-off problem on a site you only visit once, it seems systematic for us.
b) We're easily contactable, so people do write to us to ask about it rather than just throwing up their hands over it - a perception bias on my part
c) There's something about the *way* people use Wikipedia that leads to this.
I'm tending towards c) - page zoom can often be altered by things like mouse-wheel scrolling, which you get a lot when moving through long pages, of which we obviously have plenty. But I'd be interested if anyone has any other explanations for the phenomenon, and if we ought to feed this back to someone in the usability groups.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Andrew Gray wrote:
Marc Riddell wrote:
[possible page-zoom issues]
But why is it we get these issues? Three possibilities leap out at me:
a) it actually happens fairly randomly across all sites, but people tend to come back to Wikipedia, so that while it may seem a once-off problem on a site you only visit once, it seems systematic for us.
b) We're easily contactable, so people do write to us to ask about it rather than just throwing up their hands over it - a perception bias on my part
To be fair, though... for how many websites are you in a position to see such problems? Do you deal with user complaints at Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and the New York Times as well? Otherwise I would think this is a clear case of selection bias: it's likely that people behave no differently with Wikipedia than they do with any other website, it's just that we only happen to hear about the Wikipedia issues.
c) There's something about the *way* people use Wikipedia that leads to this.
I'm tending towards c) - page zoom can often be altered by things like mouse-wheel scrolling, which you get a lot when moving through long pages, of which we obviously have plenty. But I'd be interested if anyone has any other explanations for the phenomenon, and if we ought to feed this back to someone in the usability groups.
If page zooming is the issue, I don't think there's really anything we could do about it. This seems to me to be a pretty clear-cut case of users not knowing what's going on; trying to disable zooming altogether for the benefit of that small set of users would be antisocial. The best we can do is to educate users on why this is happening and how they can prevent it in the future.
Cheers,
On 11 July 2010 14:26, Benjamin Esham bdesham@gmail.com wrote:
b) We're easily contactable, so people do write to us to ask about it rather than just throwing up their hands over it - a perception bias on my part
To be fair, though... for how many websites are you in a position to see such problems? Do you deal with user complaints at Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and the New York Times as well? Otherwise I would think this is a clear case of selection bias: it's likely that people behave no differently with Wikipedia than they do with any other website, it's just that we only happen to hear about the Wikipedia issues.
I suspect you are entirely right! I'm not quite sure how I missed this explanation - it is pretty obvious - but I think I was being misled by the "unique" aspect of it, in that people tend to report it's us and only us who are broken.
On the other hand, in all the years I've helped people who've had "internet problems" generally - I've had jobs dealing with public computer rooms for over ten years - I've almost never encountered it "in the wild". There are some technical problems that get reported for Wikipedia that seem to be closely linked to our site in a way that makes me suspect they're disproportionately common with us for some reason or another, though as you say there are selection bias issues here.
(The other, incidentally, is the situation where loading a page prompts a message asking to download the file rather than displaying it, a known IE bug - I encounter this myself occasionally on enwiki, but rarely anywhere else, and once a month or so see an email about it. That one certainly feels more than just random, though I don't know if we ever identified the source of it.)