navigation sometimes flickers and shows navigation without the css

[monta17]

I have been working on this website for quite some time and finally have all the design and elements in place and am now adding the info and images for all of the pages.

I just started noticing the following:
As you are clicking through the thumbnail images below the main images to go from one to another SOMETIMES there is a very, very quick flash which shows the side (accordion) navigation as it would look without the accordion css. So it just looks like blue, underlined words. In that quick flash I also notice that you see a scrollbar along the right side of the window.

You have to click on quite a few of the thumbnails for this to start happening and then it seems to happen just now and again with no particular pattern.

I have gotten so much done on this site and now am terrified about what is going on.

Please, if someone out there has any ideas, I need your help!
Here is a link to the website:
http://www.das20studio.com/test1/index.html

Just go into any of the three categories (urban + landscape, interiors or residential) and select one of the projects (some of them are not created yet). Then start clicking the thumbnails under the image. It might take a while before it starts happening.

Thanks.
Barbara

Just to let you know...
a little while ago when I was looking at it, the flicker thing was happening a lot.
But just now I had to click on a LOT of thumbnails on a few different pages before it started to happen.
So if you are kind enough to check it out, please do a lot of clicking.
Thanks.

 

[angelwatt]

Couldn't get any flickering. What browser is it happening in. I was using Firefox.

 

[monta17]

Sorry. I forgot to mention that I was using Safari and I thought I had tried it on Firefox and had the same problem.

However, I just checked it on Firefox and after clicking on fifty - sixty thumbnails it didn't happen. Then I switched to Safari and after about thirty or so clicks it happened once, then after 10-20 more it happened again. It's just like the page starts to load in without the css and you see blue or purple links in the nav on the left, then just as quick as a blink it switches to looking right. It happens so fast that you really don't know what you saw the first couple of times.

Maybe I should just let it go for now. What do you think?

I was clicking from one thumbnail to the next very rapidly, sometimes not waiting for the page to load in. Maybe that is the problem. And a user probably won't be clicking that fast.

I don't know, really. I can't imagine starting this whole site over again. Especially when I don't know what's wrong so I don't know if redoing everything would even help.

Thanks,
Barbara

 

[angelwatt]

I'd let it go unless it becomes more frequent or you hear from users that it's problematic.

 

[SrWebDeveloper]

Yet another reason why FFox is preferred by a vast majority of users compared to other browsers. My stats always show FF in the lead by an overwhelming majority, i.e. for January to September 2010 for visitors to the W3C's web site with a delta of 5 years, FF averages about 45% with MSIE at 31% and all the others no more than 17%. In years past MSIE might account for 80% but that's changed in the recent era as the open source competition grew. Safari? Average 3.7%.

@OP:

Anyway, I looked at your source and see you're using CSS to format unordered lists (UL tags) to display the images. This method is commonly used for menus with multiple levels of parent/children. Looking at your actual page, you might consider "slimming" it down and simply floating div's to contain each image generated via ASP and a simple CSS class without using negative background positioning as all the thumbs are the same size and in one row under content with a black background. I mean to say there are no levels that expand dynamically left/right and up/down like menus so not sure why you used the "menu" approach for this? If you simplify all this, you might find this helps with cross browser compatibility issues. The old story, "less is more".

 

[monta17]

I not exactly sure I follow all you are saying about changing the way the images are in the thumbnail section (because I am new to this). However, the reason that I have them as they are is because I am using one image that has all of the thumbnails on it for each project (I will attach it).

Actually the flashing problem on the thumbnails wasn't happening much this morning.

However it is happening at least 80-90% of the time when selecting different projects in the ACCORDION NAVIGATION at the left when viewed on a PC in IE8. It doesn't seem to happen at all in IE7.

It is very spotty on Safari... this morning it didn't happen at all on the left nav and only once out of ALL of the thumbnails. This afternoon it's happening on lots of thumbnails.

Firefox (on my Mac) seems to be ok most of the time now.

It happens on the left and on the thumbs almost all of the time in Chrome (on Mac).

It only happens occasionally on Opera.

Is there any way you could look at it in one of the "problem" browsers to see what I'm talking about?
I'm getting very desperate!

Here is the image for one of the thumbnails. I'm thinking that this may not be the problem since it is happening more often with the accordion navigation. Could it be something about how fast (or slow) the pages are loading in? Why would it happen sometimes and not other times, and act totally different on different each time you look at it?
Yikes!

Thanks for all your help,
Barbara