By Tony Attwood
I need your help.
Some people on reading our website of late, are reporting a number of blank spaces on the screen part way through the article. The articles are still there, but instead of there being one line of space between one paragraph and the next, sometimes there can be a lot of white space with nothing there.
For example in our last article What can we say about Arsenal’s chances of finishing in the top four? the article appears on their computer or phone ok, down to the phrase “as long as we don’t get knocked out in the preliminary round”
Then there is a big white space before the piece carries on with no blips to “as if we didn’t know.”
After that, there is a second space, and from then on after the space everything is fine.
Now those spaces should not be there, and I am trying to figure out why on some screens they are and on other screens not.
So if you are a person who quite likes Untold Arsenal and what we hope are our unique insights into the club in particular and football in general, I would like you to email me telling me if you are seeing the gaps, if you are using an ad blocker, and if you are reading through a phone, a PC, or an Apple device or something else.
As I am sure you can understand I wouldn’t ask if we had any other way of solving this little technical mystery, but we do need quite a few reports to try and work out what’s going on.
Just email Tony@schools.co.uk and write in the subject line “Untold Spaces”.
Many thanks.
Tony
Hi Tony
Yes seeing large gaps in script. Have tried with and without Ad Blocker and still see large gaps in script.
This is the code I see on this page where the big white space is after:
Then there is a big white space before the piece carries on with no blips to “as if we didn’t know.”
I know nothing about html, so I don’t know if this helps. On A PC, using Chrome
The code didn’t copy across, but now an ad has loaded in that space, so methinks it might just be ads not loading correctly?
Hello Tony, the space shows up as Ad space on my computer. And there are ads playing also. I assume the ads just don’t appear on some PC’s because they are blocked.
Yup. I’m seeing the big old gaps from iPhone 12, os14.7.1.
There’s even one in this post asking for help (between “as if we didn’t know” and “After that”).
Also, when I clicked on the 3 lines to see if I could find an email address, the whole red column that opened up was empty. Just a big block of red nothingness.
Thought it best to let you know as a reply instead.
It’s an AdBlocker issue for me.
As soon as I OK’d AdBlocker to be paused ‘once’– for this page one time, and reloaded– the ads appeared in the height of the blank spaces.
Hi, these whte spaces are ad space allocated by the HTML but blocked by something on the client (probably AdBlock). I have tried to eliminate these many times but it cannot be done … sorry.
Using a Mac …having no problems. I would like to see a better layout for the type. Love the content.
Thanks M
Tony
I haven’t had that issue but there is definitely something amiss with the adds.
When I go into an article an add sits permanently along the bottom of the screen. In the top RH corner there is a Blue right facing triangle and a small blue cross.
This should delete the add but doesn’t.
But also, and this is the odd bit, a small black cross sits outside the box, just above the blue cross. Clicking on this clears the add.
I know that’s probably not a great help but it does feed into the notion that the issue is possibly around the add blocking and add clearing.
Sorry if I’m wasting your time.
It’s an adblocker issue for me. Disable the adblocker on my laptop using Chrome and the space disappears and ads take their place
@GoingGoingGooner,
I concur, I use an addbloker on my laptop, but none on my iPhone.
The empty space is the ads not being shown
Ditto what Nitram said.
Also, adverts in between paragraphs. Irritating!
Could it be something to do with the privacy settings? Using safari on Macs, the white boxes only appear if all privacy settings are rejected and objected.
The x at the bottom appears whatever the privacy settings.
I have no issues on my computer , Tony.
Sorry about the ads Zorlakki but we need people to respond to the adverts, even by just having a look, in order to pay to keep this site running. As you can imagine, because of the controversial nature of some of the topics we work on, we do upset a few people, and so the level of security is perhaps higher than on some other sites.
i think its how the ads are showing up as i turned on the ad blocked so i can read the article without the ads showing up inbetween paragraphs. also on a mobile i have to scroll past endless amounts of ads before i can reach the comments.
Hi, Tony
I do have those big white spaces appearing in the articles I read on the site
I read them on an IMac 2017, MacOS Monterey 12.1 is the operating system, Firefox 95.0.2 the browser and I very, very rarely disable the ad blockers that go with it
I’d be very surprised if the PGMO had nothing to do with sabotaging the site!!
Of course on Mac I can always use the “reading” mode (option-command-R) if the blanks really bother me (I don’t care much, actually) – they don’t appear then
I tried to mail you this at Tony.Attwood@aisa.org, but it didn’t work
It could be that the site hosting the ads is having problems. I have been seeing this issue (intermittently) for years.