First, let me point out that I am really not sure whether this problem is with CSS & HTML or with Javascript.

I am an inexperienced web designer and I have run into a problem with AOL on a site I created. This problem has only appeared for people using AOL. The flash intro plays, & the homepage loads with no problem. However, when the user clicks on a link in the navigation bar (with the exception of the page containing slideshowpro) the page loads incorrectly as follows; the background, logo and navigation bars remain intact, but the content area is empty, as if it were a blank template page. This problem has been reported by 2 AOL users on PC, and one on Mac. I am not sure what specific browser was being used, as these problems were reported to me secondhand by the client.

Another, probably unrelated problem: the slideshowpro gallery on the gallery page is not working; the images don't load.

The homepage is here. (Please note: the site design was heavily influenced by the client)

The site works correctly on recent versions of IE, FF & Safari. If anyone knows how I can fix this, please let me know.

Thanks,

Nate

Here is some more information:

First, here is a gif of what it looks like in AOL.

Also, I found a couple more interesting things when I got a minute on the client's computer.

1. Pages that have enough content to scroll on the working site still scroll on the broken site, even though there is no content. The background pattern just fills all of the scrollable area.

2. If you click in the little area where the content goes on the broken pages, all of the links on the page stop working

3. In looking at what the broken pages have in common, I found that of the divs, only the "leftbar" and either "center2" or "center3" appear on the broken pages and not on any working page.

Hopefully this will help. Thanks to anyone who takes a look at this.

That certainly is a head scratcher.

I'm not certain I understand what you mean by "people using AOL". What do you mean by "using AOL"? AOL is their ISP? You screenshot depicts a FF browser, so it's not an AOL browser of some sort...

My 2 cents - avoid clients who use AOL.

Man, am I ever having tech support flashbacks. I don't have a helpful long-term site fix for you, but for the short term, I'd get the affected clients to use an outside browser.

They'll connect to AOL and go through their usual route to get to the actual internet (I used to have them actually go to somewhere like yahoo.com. You might have to explain to them several times that AOL is not the internet) they can then minimize AOL and use MSIE or Safari. They just need to find the default browser on their computer and fire it up.

Once AOL makes the connection, any web browser will work. They could use Firefox too, but chances are if they're using AOL they won't have that installed anywhere. If you'd like to walk them through getting it installed, more power to you :)

At least this way, you'll only be dealing with MSIE/Safari issues with the site right now, rather than trying to figure out the beast that is AOL. Then once one of us figures out what's going on, they can go back into their safe little AOL cubbyhole.

Well, I have solved the problem. I just revised my layout positioning a little using techniques described in CSS Mastery, and it now works fine. Hooray! Thanks to everyone who took a look at my problem.

Nate

Ha... a lot of people do think AOL is the Internet. And yes, these people make awful clients.

First, let me point out that I am really not sure whether this problem is with CSS & HTML or with Javascript.

This is pretty much just a tangent at this point, but as of 2001ish, AOL's browsing setup actually did have an altered JS engine. We ran into trouble with it at the time where I was working when using window.open() for some stuff. I haven't kept track of what/where/if things have changed for AOL users since then, but it's still maybe worth keeping a note around for.