Disappearing SUBMIT button on create account

We ran a generally successful sale this past weekend, but we had four or five customers call to inform us they could not get past the create account form. Seems the SUBMIT button at the end of the form would appear for a second or two and then disappear. I spoke directly to one of these customers to confirm this. He saved the html page and emailed it to me, but it looks fine here -- button is right where it should be. He noted that the button appears and stays put when he loads the page from his local system, but it disappears more than half the time when he loads it from the Web.

We're running 1.3.7 (I know -- we are long overdue for the 1.3.8 upgrade!) and the page in question is available by going here and following the CREATE ACCOUNT button.

The customer with whom I spoke said he experienced the problem intermittently when using IE6 and Win XP. He has Norton Internet Security installed, and says he experienced the problem even when disabling the Norton anti-phishing application. Sometimes the button disappeared, sometimes not. I have yet to find a system still running IE6 or Norton Internet Security with which to view the page.

While some customers were calling to alert us to the disappearing submit button, others were simultaneously creating new accounts and completing orders with no problems. No idea yet whether the customer with whom I spoke was the only one running IE6 and/or Norton Internet Security.

Any suggestions what I should do next?

omg i just realized this problem in IE.... please help

What version of Zen-Cart are you running? Have you received reports of -- or personally witnessed -- any buttons disappearing from any of your forms? If so, any idea which browser(s) or security application(s) were running locally? I still don't have enough information to conclude the problem happens with any particular browser, security app, operating system, or combination of elements -- all I know at this point is that some (not all) customers couldn't submit their forms on the create account page. We probably lost a few sales as a result; my first priority is to isolate and fix this problem.

Suggestions/Ideas are welcome. :lookaroun

DrByte's release notes on 1.3.8a refer to a bug-fix -- "login and create-account code synchronized." Plus, it looks like an additional security feature was added to these forms in 1.3.8a.

Can anyone speak to whether these enhancements might be related to the sometimes-disappearing submit button reported with our ZC-1.3.7?

tvadpro:

What version of Zen-Cart are you running? Have you received reports of -- or personally witnessed -- any buttons disappearing from any of your forms? If so, any idea which browser(s) or security application(s) were running locally? I still don't have enough information to conclude the problem happens with any particular browser, security app, operating system, or combination of elements -- all I know at this point is that some (not all) customers couldn't submit their forms on the create account page. We probably lost a few sales as a result; my first priority is to isolate and fix this problem.

Suggestions/Ideas are welcome. :lookaroun

I am using 1.3.8a. I have not seen any other buttons missing. Yesterday, someone told me that their friend was trying to sign up in IE but they got to the bottom of the form and the submit button was missing, so they couldn't register.

I checked in my IE (latest version) and it was indeed missing. But in Firefox it was present and working fine!

I don't think it's much to do with the security feature of the browser, but rather a problem within the site. I have the login sidebox running and I installed then immediately tried to uninstall Ultimate SEO. That's all I can think of.

I was thinking it could be a problem in the code somewhere, such as some code that wasn't closed, but how could that explain the fact it's working in Firefox? And I don't think its a CSS issue because the button would still be there, just overlapping something else, right??

Thanks for the info, onelove! The customer who tested this while we were on the phone indicated that the button disappearance was intermittent. Sometimes the submit button appeared and stayed put, other times it disappeared. This in itself suggests there is no problem with the CSS.

Interesting that you're experiencing the problem in 1.3.8a -- seems to negate the idea that it was a bug fixed in the current release.

Also interesting that you're experiencing the missing button when using IE7. I tried more than once to create the missing button behavior with IE7, but none of my systems have hidden the button -- at least not yet.

Wondering if the common thread might be a security app such as Norton. Or maybe an obscure security setting in IE preferences? And if this is the case, what exactly would trigger the behavior? I'd expect the IE users who report this problem with our create account form to experience similar hang-ups when submitting similar forms on other web sites.

Maybe a virus?> onelove5683:

... I don't think its a CSS issue because the button would still be there, just overlapping something else, right??

I really dont think it's a virus or anything to do with any security application such as norton.

Does any one have any ideas? Has the ZenCart team come across this issue yet? Could you guys please chime in and let us know what was causing the issue prior to 1.3.8a? Perhaps its the same thing happening...

I'd say this is pretty major, considering people cannot check out of they can't register. And if they can't register, I don't think they will come back.

Can a member of the ZenCart team please help us address this issue?

I doubt this problem resides in Zen-Cart. The html page built by ZC is the same -- regardless which browser, operating system or third party application(s) a visitor utilizes. Browsers sometimes display the same css differently, due at least in part (I think) to Microsoft's reluctance to conform IE to Web standards set by the W3C. You may want to try validating the html and css of your create account page. I'm doing the same here as we speak -- so far, I discovered a superfluous /table closing tag, which probably is not causing intermittent button disappearances in IE -- but never hurts to make sure.

Maybe caused by faulty html in a custom template? Have you tried reproducing the error when your site uses "classic" template? I'm thinking about trying that one myself. Would be more inclined to try that if I could reproduce the error myself in the first place.

Could try Googling for Internet Explorer Peek-a-boo bug ...

Perhaps your HTML and CSS are fighting against each other and causing an overlap whereby the button is overlapped or shoved out of view because of insufficient space etc?
Does the disappearing happen when you resize your browser window wider and taller?
How about if you turn off the right and/or left column globally as a brief test?
How about if you change to the Classic template instead of your custom template?

DrByte:

Perhaps your HTML and CSS are fighting against each other and causing an overlap whereby the button is overlapped or shoved out of view because of insufficient space etc?
Does the disappearing happen when you resize your browser window wider and taller?
How about if you turn off the right and/or left column globally as a brief test?
How about if you change to the Classic template instead of your custom template?

• The button is not there after resizing he browser window.
• I turned off the right and then ledt columns globally and still no submit button. Even with both columns off at the same time.
• When I switched to the classic template, the button was there.
  If the HTML and CSS are fighting against each other causing an overlap, why is it just happening in IE? And how do you recommend fixing the issue? Thanks.

^^^ See my post above. :D

Kim:

^^^ See my post above. :D

I just checked it out. The issue with with IE7 though, it seems like the peekaboo bug is a problem with IE6, or both?

I tried to go to the CSS and uncomment the lines that mention the peekabo bug. Nothing changed, even after clearing cache etc etc.

How would I get the damn peekaboo bug anyway? There don't seem to be any other issues with the site in IE. I'm not convinced that this is the problem... I may be wrong though.

=/

Something is forcing your page layout to expand further right than you probably intended. See attached screenshot. Note that the fieldset lines around the input area are not fully completed, but rather the right side is not displayed.

What do you recommend will fix it?

Why is it perfect in Firefox?

In these type situations the first thing I do is Validate the code.

From doing that I would recommend you remove or correct the Web-Stat JS coding. You have other validation problems as well but the JS code is probably causing your current problems.

BTW, it is not perfect in FF as (for me) it shows the "noscript" alternative text link for web-stat.com; when I presume there is supposed to be an image?

Kim:

^^^ See my post above. :DI did precisely that Kim -- thank you for (probably) clearing up yet another one of my headaches. OneLove, you might be interested in this solution for the peek-a-boo. Have not yet implemented it, but I will be doing so in a few days. Author of the page linked above claims the peek-a-boo still manifests in IE7, and may even be WORSE than it was in IE6.

Also, I'm probably running the same Web-Stat code mentioned by Rob. Probably has nothing to do with the disappearance of my submit button -- just one category of issues I'll eventually need to fix for HTML validation.

As for OneLove's question about why the button misfires sometimes in IE but never in Firefox -- refer to my initial comments regarding W3C standards compliance and Microsoft's refusal to comply.

At the risk of saying so prematurely, thanks for helping sort this out, everyone.

Thanks DrByte! When I looked at the same page in IE7 (XP Pro SP3) the same fieldset did something screwy. A different flavor of screwy, but still out-of-whack. Submit button appears beneath the fieldset on my screen in IE7, but there is a problem there which I hope the peek-a-boo bug fix in CSS will resolve. If it doesn't at least now I have some specific ideas on where to look for the problem. The screenshot is VERY helpful! :smile:> DrByte:

Something is forcing your page layout to expand further right than you probably intended. See attached screenshot. Note that the fieldset lines around the input area are not fully completed, but rather the right side is not displayed.

why would we get the peekaboo bug in our zencarts? is it something on the server?