Why do I get blank text in MovableType 2.661 on IE6 until mouseover or scroll up?

August 30, 2004 8:12 AM

Blank text in Movable Type 2.661 on IE 6 - until mouseover or scroll - then text shows up. What's going on?

I run a few MT blogs and encountered this previously with an earlier version of MT. When you first go to the page there's a field of white instead of text. But the text immediately shows up if you mouseover it or scroll to get the screen to redraw it.

In the previous case, it seemed that the CSS didn't want "blogbody" to have any hard HTML display elements like horizontal rules in it. At least, the problem stopped when I replaced the horizontal rules with CSS-generated rules. But this is now happening on both the extended entry (individual archive template) and on the pop-up comments window, the latter of which I have done nothing to change from the template other than editing the color of the banner in the CSS. Has anybody encountered this bizarreness? I've trolled the MT forums without any success.

posted by soyjoy to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

It's just CSS bugs in IE. If you haven't changed the CSS much, revert it back to the original stylesheet templates and see if that solves it.

I had a site design that worked in everything but IE6/win the other day and it turned out a line-height on a paragraph element was making the entire page disappear in that browser, even though the CSS and HTML were standard.
posted by mathowie at 8:32 AM on August 30, 2004

I find a lot of "peek a boo" style CSS bugs in IE can be solved by giving whatever container you're working with a height. Height in IE is kind of equivalent to min-height in other browsers -- once the content gets bigger than the height, the container will stretch.

If you're not averse, and I'm not, use the underscore hack (_height: 100px;) to hide it from non-IE browsers.
posted by o2b at 9:04 AM on August 30, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks, matt and o2b. As mystifying as the original problem was, occurring on sections of pages I hadn't altered, now even more so is that it's not happening anymore, now that I've posted here. Is it some kind of shamanic MeFi thing? I had been tinkering with other unrelated specs in the CSS, but have no idea what I could've done that made the difference. At any rate, thanks for your good vibes.
And o2b, I'm not familiar with the "underscore hack." Is this something that IE will read but other browsers will ignore?
posted by soyjoy at 9:31 AM on August 30, 2004

The underscore hack looks like this:

div.class {width: 50px; _width: 40px;}

IE/PC will read the second width, all other browsers will ignore it. Some folks don't like to use hacks; I keep them to a minimum, but this one is just too useful. Using it combination with IE 6's quirks mode, I find I can limit my hacks to IE/PC related issues.
posted by o2b at 9:45 AM on August 30, 2004

Response by poster: cool. that is useful. thanks!
posted by soyjoy at 12:00 PM on August 30, 2004

Hitting F11 twice will usually clear it, btw.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:28 PM on August 30, 2004

Sounds like you're still using old stylesheets for your site. You might want to try grabbing the latest ones from our site and republishing. And hey, new version of MT today if you're feeling motivated.
posted by anildash at 1:05 AM on August 31, 2004