Daniel has an issue when he’s using the Internet: Every so often I get an e-mail with a link that takes me to a legitimate page, but then when I make the font size large enough that I can read it, a small triangular box appears containing links to different social media programs. This box, always on the left side of the screen covers up a portion of the message I am trying to read, obscuring words/phrases that cannot be uncovered by scrolling the page. How do I get rid of that obnoxious box? I’ve included a screenshot.
Daniel, there are a couple of possibilities. One, this could be some legitimate social sharing tools that the site offers. Many sites do have pop-up menus for sharing. You may be able to click off it to get away from it or, you should be able to just scroll past it to view the part of the site you need to see.
The other possibility is that you’ve inadvertently installed a social sharing toolbar on your browser. You’ll want to look through both the installed programs on your PC and the extensions and add-ons installed on your browser to see if you find anything with a name like Share or Social. This could be the culprit and you may want to remove them.
~ Cynthia
As a fellow vision impaired person I too have come up with this annoying sidebar. In an earlier WorldStart article they talk about a way to bring up a window that shows the HTML of the webpage. My cat can bring it up but I don’t know how. But when you find out all you need do is mouse over the offending graphic and it will be highlighted in the text. Press and presto it disappears. Maybe someone at WorldStart will add to this comment with the key combo for that diagnostic panel?
Keith – Using the Firefox browser, I put the mouse cursor over the Social Media “buttons” and do a right-click. On the menu that pops up, select Inspect Element. That brings up HTML Code. The Social Media junk may be highlighted or look for words like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Highlight the line with the offending code and press the Delete Key.
I tried it on WordStart (this page) and also on Weatherchannel.com (had to do multiple lines of code). Seems to have worked, but the icons will come back on your next visit.
Good luck!