front page all over the place in IE

front page all over the place in IE

by Ben Christopher -
Number of replies: 19
Hi there,

my front page appears to be way too big in IE, you have scroll left and right to see everthing. in Firefox, this is not the case. Is there a fix for this problem?

Thanks
Ben
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ben Christopher

Re: front page all over the place in IE - virus warning

by Mauno Korpelainen -

It is certainly a css problem of your custom theme but there is something on your site that you should be worried more - an iframe that launches a trojan virus.

If you check the source code of your site you see at the end iframe tags to google-analyze in china - it's a malicious script that you should immediately delete.

See details for example from http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=146254 and make sure that your home computer has some kind of an updated virus scanner.

In reply to Mauno Korpelainen

Re: front page all over the place in IE - virus warning

by Steve Killer -
Mauno

I've been struggling with IE7 mis-rendering for some time now, for example here. Surprisingly few other people have reported the same issues.
The McAfee posting implies the cause is obfuscated javascript putting iframes after </html> and, maybe, sometimes in the html. (Surely IE7 ignores everything after </html>? But then...)

The source I captured off IE7 (attached) doesn't show any iframes at all. (Maybe the MS page source people didn't talk to the MS rendering engine people.) It still shows the sideblocks narrowed, compared to FF2 and FF3. The attached source file opened from my workstation in IE7 still gives narrow sideblocks. FF3 renders perfectly.

I'd take this to mean this may not be JS/Tenia.d per McAfee.

Does this mean my (and a few dozen other viewers) have messed-up IE7? I doubt that: MS have updated IE7 (and the rest of Vistabig grin) on my workstation several times since I noticed this.

Any help anyone can give will be appreciated.

Rgds
Steve K
In reply to Steve Killer

Re: front page all over the place in IE - virus warning

by Mauno Korpelainen -

Well...this is totally different issue than Ben's case.

I should test your site (theme) better but at least there are some errors in your site css: read first  http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_class_float.asp

Try to set float to "none" and change color codes to #000; or #000000;

.headermain, h1.headermain {
  float:right;left;
  margin:0;
  padding:0;
}

.cpdresource {
  font-weight: 500;
  font-size: 0.8em;
  color: #00;
}

h1.cpdresource,
h2.cpdresource,
h3.cpdresource,
h4.cpdresource,
h5.cpdresource,
h6.cpdresource {
  font-weight: 900;
  font-size: 0.9em;
  color: #00;
}

div.cpd_loggedinas{
  clear:both;
  padding: 20px;
  width: 610px;
  text-align:center;
  float:center;
}


.cpdupdated {
  font-weight: 500;
  font-size: 0.7em;
  color: #00;
  text-align:right;
}

I could test it better tomorrow if changing float does not help...

In reply to Mauno Korpelainen

Re: front page all over the place in IE - virus warning

by Steve Killer -
Hi Mauno

The "right;left" was my boo-boo blush. "none" floats the logo over to the left, and we want it on the right, so I've put it "right" (pun).
I've put all the #00 in the legacy css to #000000.

Still no cigarsad but I'd really appreciate it if you could still look at the IE7 rendering, especially the narrow boxes, the random font size and non-display of course.gif

But FF is perfect!

Thanks for your help.
Steve K


We're using theme standardwhite to which we've made three wheensy changes on Moodle 1.9 + (Build: 20080402) on Linux 2.6.9-67.0.7.ELsmp / Apache 1.3.41 (Unix) / MySQL.0.45-community / php 5.2.5.
In reply to Steve Killer

Re: front page all over the place in IE

by Mauno Korpelainen -

Steve,

I visited your site and this problem with course.gif is strange because other files from the same folder are visible and course.gif is visible in other browsers than IE...

Can you make a zip package (or some other package) of your standard theme and standardwhite theme folder and send the package to my email (found from my profile). I could check first if the reason for your problems is in theme or in the settings or content of your site.

In reply to Steve Killer

Re: front page all over the place in IE

by Mauno Korpelainen -

Steve - the first problem solved.

File course.gif is not at all gif image - you have probably renamed an ico file and IE can't open it.

I downloaded your file from your site, zoomed it a little, took a screenshot and saved a new file as an optimized, transparent gif image with GIMP (attached)

Click mouse right click over the image, save and upload to your site.

Attachment course.gif
In reply to Mauno Korpelainen

Re: front page all over the place in IE

by Steve Killer -
Hi Mauno

The course.gif works perfectly on IE7! I learnt something!!

I've sent the zip as requested.

Thanks for your help.
Steve K
In reply to Steve Killer

Re: front page all over the place in IE

by Mauno Korpelainen -

Thanks for the package. I unzipped it, moved to my test site and it looks like the right block problem is in your theme...

I will send you a fixed theme tomorrow.

Usually it is better to leave standard theme untouched and take a copy of standard theme (or what ever theme), rename the copy and edit the renamed theme.

In reply to Steve Killer

Re: front page all over the place in IE

by Mauno Korpelainen -

Steve,

as strange as it sounds IE seems to work correct this time and Firefox does not respect the settings you have in theme/standardwhite/config.php:

$THEME->block_l_min_width = 148;
$THEME->block_l_max_width = 148;
$THEME->block_r_min_width = 148;
$THEME->block_r_max_width = 148;

In IE the width of left and right block is exactly 148 px. Take these max_widths away or use a wider value. Still - if you don't make any changes to original Standard theme upgrading moodle is a lot easier...the idea of parent themes in http://docs.moodle.org/en/Theme_basics is that you only add the needed changes to child theme (css and logos) and when parent theme is upgraded all children are upgraded as well.

If this does not help I can check the other parts of code but on my test server it seemed to solve your right block problem.

In reply to Mauno Korpelainen

Re: front page all over the place in IE

by Steve Killer -
Mauno

Thank you (cubed)!!! I had been losing sleep over this for weeks!

Steve K
In reply to Mauno Korpelainen

Re: front page all over the place in IE - virus warning

by Ben Christopher -
Thanks Mauno.
First (big) issue. i have AVG anti virus protection but my site is on an external web hosting service. what do i need to do about this? if i scan my machine, how can that clear up my moodle website?

second. so its a CSS problem related to my formal white theme. like i said with firefox there's no prob, what is it i should do?
Thanks again
ben
In reply to Ben Christopher

Re: front page all over the place in IE - virus warning

by Mauno Korpelainen -

JS/Tenia.d is a new virus ( Discovery Date 06/25/2008 ) and I don't know exactly what it can do. Virus Characteristics: "The recent variant also included Javascript obfuscated malicious iFrames. These iFrames will lead to redirection of the browser window to browser exploits that will download and execute malware on user's computer."

If it's just that you can simply delete the iframe tags, update your home computer virus scanner and run. I really don't know what kind of malware it is trying to install. I suppose the scripts are just trying to install some malware to your home pc.

If it were something similar as for example http://www.dynamoo.com/blog/2007_07_01_archive.html

things get more serious - then you might need to scan all files and folders of your host. Have you checked user profiles and possible hacking attempts - or did you insert the iframe yourself?

I could not check the source code of your site before for this virus but I can do it later. Probably you need to change just order of tags (divs) or one or two css tags but I hope you get this chinese google analyzer deleted first.

In reply to Mauno Korpelainen

Re: front page all over the place in IE - virus warning

by Ben Christopher -

Mauno,

ok ive checked the view source on front page and seen the i frame then checked other pages and all have this iframe placed somewhere in their code. as far as you know, if i trawl through each and every page and delete the contents between these iframe tags, that will aid the problem?

i am going to alert my web host

thanks for bringing this to my attention

ben

In reply to Ben Christopher

Re: front page all over the place in IE - virus warning

by Mauno Korpelainen -

...all have this iframe placed somewhere in their code...

Just one note: did you check different files or only pages from moodle? If the iframe is in footer.html of your site theme it is visible on all pages of moodle. It might also be hidden at the end of index.php and would be visible on all pages of moodle.

If the iframe tags are for example in all php/html files that means that the trojan virus has already started invasion agains the server by copying those iframe tags. If you find out (from logs of moodle or server access logs) where the first iframes came from it might be helpful - deleting the trojans without updated virus scanner may be hard and editing files one by one even harder if your site has a lot of files.

Sometimes it is just easier to rebuild site from clean backups - if you have such files.

In reply to Mauno Korpelainen

Re: front page all over the place in IE - virus warning

by Ben Christopher -

Mauno just received this from my web host:

To cut a long story short a new exploit was discovered by mcaffee on 25/06/2008 that allows a php script to be used to insert that iframe at the bottom of any .htm / .html file and any index.php file. We were hit on 28th L

The idea is that users would end up on that site and their machines would get infected. It looks like the site has been shut down.

Today we are moving all sites from our ‘saturn’ server and placing them on other servers so that a full cleanup can be done. If you want to start cleaning up your site all you need to so is look at all files modified on the 28th of this month that are .htm / html or index.php and remove that last line for the iframe. If you don’t want to do it, just leave it and it shall be done when we move you.

..i intend to let them clear it up so i can get on with getting it sorted.

with regards to my other problem of my page being to large for screen, you mentioned that it sounds like a css problem. could you (or anyone) point me in the right direction as to which css tag and how would it need to be changed in order for my page to fit the IE screen?

Thanks in advance

ben

In reply to Ben Christopher

Re: front page all over the place in IE - virus warning

by Mauno Korpelainen -

Ben,

when you get rid of that trojan can you send some test user name and test password to your site - those iframes were still there when I visited your site login screen a minute ago.

In previous screenshot the mountain image at the middle (topic section) looked rather large - have you tried to make it smaller?

In reply to Ben Christopher

Re: front page all over the place in IE

by Mauno Korpelainen -

Hi Ben,

yes I received your email and checked your site with different screen sizes.

Your theme may have a similar setting as Steve's theme for

$THEME->block_l_max_width and $THEME->block_r_max_width 

If you need those custom blocks and big image in site topic you could move all blocks from right to left  and make left block a little wider with $THEME->block_l_max_width = 250; in theme config.php (or 300 if 250 is still too narrow)

Moodle can't zoom images without some extra javascript that could set width and height attributes for images so it is easier to use smaller images.

If you use (repeating) background images this kind of problems do not happen but then you don't see the whole image with small screens so the optimal solution could be to use images that fit to 800x600 screen with side blocks and margins ( if left block is 250 px it leaves about 540 px max for image width with margins and paddings - without right block )

In reply to Mauno Korpelainen

Re: front page all over the place in IE

by Ben Christopher -

thanks mauno - ill have alook at that.

do we know why with FF, all is well?

ben

In reply to Mauno Korpelainen

Re: front page all over the place in IE

by Ben Christopher -

hey mauno,

just checked my site on IE - all looks well, did you have a tinker or has it sorted itself out - either way, i'm a happy camper

thanks

ben