IE not going to Anchor on Form Submit

peterfm

Forgive me if I don't do this right - my first time posting (almost anywhere!).

I am building a site (xhtml and css) which includes five php pages with booking/mailing forms in php (using PEAR smtp). They all work very nicely in recent versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari. They post to the same page and on clicking Submit they display/don't display the form as appropriate, and return to the anchor point I have set, eg action="telephone-counseling.php#cont"

They work nicely in IE (7 and 8) except for one important thing - the forms do not return to the anchors correctly (eg telephone-counseling.php and bookings.php ) but, strangely, the forms do seem to behave when placed in the smaller right hand column (eg questions-answers.php and wwoofing-volunteering.php).

When I transpose all the code of the forms in the right hand columns to the left hand columns, they cease to go to the anchors correctly in IE. All of these work just fine in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, as I said.

They all use the same code - though there is extra code on the bookings page - and I have tried a version with most extraneous stuff stripped out (like cufon etc, as in bookings2.php) and they still don't return correctly. I have validated, tested all anchors (set by an id in an h2 tag) and searched for many, many hours for an answer and not found a solution.

Can anyone help please? I am not new to programming (VB apps) but am relatively new to PHP, and little knowledge of javascript.

I would be very grateful for any help as I am flummoxed!

Thanks

Peter

Weedpacket

Sorry to make things weird, but I've just tried bookings2.php in IE8 and it did the right thing, positioning #bookfm at the top of the display. Have you already fixed this?

peterfm

Many thanks - I appreciate your help. NO, I haven't (knowingly) fixed it! It still isn't working properly on my IE7 but I have to confess that I was relying on my client to tell me it wasn't working in IE8 either. He may have IE8 working in IE7 mode (or, to be honest, may not even have IE8 though he says he does!). So it's helpful to know it does seem to be working in IE8 - and I will test that more thoroughly.

However, in IE7 on my machine it does not work as it should. Strangely, if I just fill nothing in and press submit on the contact-us.php form it does give me the #cont (Contact Form) right at the top of the screen, with its error, but the same form at the bottom of telephone-counseling.php doesn't do so, nor does the bookings.php form or bookings2.php form for me. They do shift down slightly, but not to where they should. There is quite a bit of codeingVery weird...

I have tried various versions of anchor tags, including adding <a name="bookfm"></a> in front of the <h2 id="bookfm"> tag but nothing seems to shift it.

If it's any help I have attached the bookings2.php as a .txt file (with passwords removed).

I spent about 10 solid hours googling and reading and haven't found anything that makes any difference or even gives me a clue! So, if you can suggest anything I would be very grateful!
Thanks

Peter

peterfm

Just to say that I have worked my way systematically through the possibilities, eliminating until I was at bare bones html. I worked with bookings.php

When I finally got down to a non-css and non-php simple html file - with all java and php code stripped out - I found in IE7 that after having more than 6 input tags in my first fieldset the anchor didn't work on post, but did if I stripped out all but 6 input tags and stripped out the other fieldset with the select with 10 options. I could leave in my third fieldset (containing 5 inputs and a textarea).

If I removed an input field from the last fieldset and put it in the first fieldset, things started not to work properly again, so it does seem to be some weird limit that IE7 can't handle - on this form. I did have divs surrounding the input tags but removing them or adding them back doesn't change anything about the behaviour.

However, this is a simple postback. When I apply these changes to the full php-css version of my bookings.php form, I find that on clicking submit without filling in anything the form with error messsage comes up in exactly the right place at the anchor - and as soon as I add in extra input tags it doesn't. So something identified there.

BUT when I fill in an post the form and all works well, it still doesn't go correctly to the anchor tag.

AND, it doesn't explain at all why the telephone-counseling.php form (where the form is at the bottom of the page), although it only has 5 input fields and one textarea it doesn't go to its correct anchor position either on error or on successful send.

Oh dear!! Does anyone have any further ideas, please??!!

Thanks

Peter

peterfm

Just to post that I have resolved this issue, in case the solution is of any interest to anyone.

I did exhaustive testing and couldn't in fact pinpoint why IE (7 and 8) was not returning to the form heading anchor after posting - when all other browsers (5 main ones) were behaving perfectly.

I did find that IE performed better when I put the right-float right column ahead of the left-float left column in the markup, and moved the php processing code before the doc declaration. There was something going on about page-loading but exactly what I couldn't say.

Rather than waste any more time on IE, I have put a goToAnchor script in the head, a $fmposting variable at the end of my php processing code, and a php conditional onload statement in the body tag. That now works very nicely, and if javascript is disabled, the return to anchor still works very well in the other browsers and at least not as badly in IE as it did.

Here's the stuff, in case it's useful to anyone else, and in case anyone can see a way of improving it!

Script in Head:
<script type="text/javascript">
function goToAnchor() {
window.location.hash="#contactfm";
}
</script>

Conditional code in Body Tag:
<body id="top" <?php if ($fmposted==true) {echo 'onload="goToAnchor()";';} ?> >

And, of course, $fmposted is set right to true at the end of my php posting code above the doc declaration, regardless of whether the message was sent or there was an error.

Peter