update on ebooks

[jonra01]

Well, I took the plunge and created ebooks in pdf format of the 3 stories on my site. I also created a page to list them. Tell me what you think. Are the cover images too large? They seem a little big to me.

Sorry, forgot the link - www.jonra.com/blog/ebooks.shtml

[Arne]

Looks good to me, did'nt find any images that's to big in my opinion.

One thing I find interesting and like to ask you about since I know you are good at CSS, is the "#" link "click here to enable mousewheel in Mozilla/Firefox". Why is'nt the pages scrollable in the first place, and what makes them scrollable after clicking that link?

I can't see any difference on the page if I click the link with IE so I wonder why the wheel can't be enabled directly Moz/Ff, when downloading the page?

I'll guess you have found something here that I can't figure out how it works

[jonra01]

One thing I find interesting and like to ask you about since I know you are good at CSS, is the "#" link "click here to enable mousewheel in Mozilla/Firefox". Why is'nt the pages scrollable in the first place, and what makes them scrollable after clicking that link?

Can't help you much here, Arne. The only reason I knew there was a problem is because I use Mozilla most of the time. During development I noticed the mousewheel would work after I clicked on a link in that div. That's why I created that fix.

The content area is a div with overflow set to auto. This adds the vertical scrollbar. It appears as if Mozilla needs to have the focus set on that div in order for the mousewheel to work. That's all that link does. The mousewheel works perfectly in IE. It scrolls the div even if there is a scrollbar on the page.

I might be able accomplish the same thing by running a javascript function while the page loads to set the focus on that div. I've been meaning to try that, just haven't found the time.

[jonra01]

Tried using focus() to activate the mousewheel for the content div. Didn't work. Focus() is meant to set the focus in a text input field, so I'm not surprised it didn't work.

[Arne]

Originally Posted by jonra01

Can't help you much here, Arne. The only reason I knew there was a problem is because I use Mozilla most of the time. During development I noticed the mousewheel would work after I clicked on a link in that div. That's why I created that fix.

The content area is a div with overflow set to auto. This adds the vertical scrollbar. It appears as if Mozilla needs to have the focus set on that div in order for the mousewheel to work. That's all that link does. The mousewheel works perfectly in IE. It scrolls the div even if there is a scrollbar on the page.

I might be able accomplish the same thing by running a javascript function while the page loads to set the focus on that div. I've been meaning to try that, just haven't found the time.

Ok. The trouble is that Mozilla needs to get the focus on the scrollable div then. Since you have set some declarations for the wheel id that differs from the declarations for the content div (if I get it right) in your CSS file, I thought you have something special there

I tested that after I posted my question. Find out that if you have that div further down on a page with enough content to get the page scrollbar visble, then clicking on a link like that will make Mozilla to move up to the top of the page. To avoid that you must add something after the # sign, e.g. the title text in the div in question.

<div id="wheel"><a href="#Chapter 1">

The good thing is, that you don't need to give the title text any id. And you don't need to give the wheel id any declarations either. Mozilla will focus on the scrolling div without it.

[China Tea]

hey jonra,

i have a page for "free for friends" in my site . . . May I put a link to your free e-books from that page?

China T

[jonra01]

Not sure what you are saying here, Arne. Adding a name to the link doesn't really change the way it works for my purposes. The href="#" is sufficient. I use named anchors sometimes for top of page links or to jump to a specific place on the page. I can envision situations that might call for the method you state, but I don't really see the need for it on this site. The fix I use is simply an effort to make the site more usable for Firefox users. It would still work OK, although without the mousewheel functionality.

I remembered how I first figured this out. The photo pages have thumbnails in a scrollable div on the right. I noticed that after you clicked on a thumbnail image the mousewheel would work. I experimented a little and found that it would work with a text link. That's when I added the fix.

I use Mozilla almost exclusively. I also use the mousewheel a lot. The lack really bothered me until I added those links. It still annoys me and I hope Mozilla changes this behavior in future versions.

[jonra01]

Originally Posted by China Tea

hey jonra,

i have a page for "free for friends" in my site . . . May I put a link to your free e-books from that page?

China T

I'd be flattered if you did, China T.

[Arne]

Originally Posted by jonra01

Not sure what you are saying here, Arne. Adding a name to the link doesn't really change the way it works for my purposes. The href="#" is sufficient. I use named anchors sometimes for top of page links or to jump to a specific place on the page. I can envision situations that might call for the method you state, but I don't really see the need for it on this site. The fix I use is simply an effort to make the site more usable for Firefox users. It would still work OK, although without the mousewheel functionality.

That's right, since your pages don't have any scrollbars, there is no need for more than the "#" in the "focus" link. I just wanted to point to what happend if you sometime use the same fix in an other page.

I use Mozilla almost exclusively. I also use the mousewheel a lot. The lack really bothered me until I added those links. It still annoys me and I hope Mozilla changes this behavior in future versions.

Me to use Mozilla almost exclusively, and scrolling with the mousewheel. But it took a long time for me before I could use the mouse for scrolling. First I belived it does not work for Mozilla for some reason connected to Windows and Microsoft

Then finally, when checking what processes was allways running after I started my computer, I discovered there was a process in the autostart for Logitech special mouse behavior. That dam process was the reason I could'nt scroll pages with my mouse wheel! After disabling the the process the scrolling worked. Can't understand why I don't get to that earlier. But as with the "focus" link for you, some solutions comes unexpected