Hi JAFanatic,
Thank you for contacting Apple Support Communities. Based on your description (the text and selected images of the page appearing within a grey border, that goes away when you click outside), I believe you may be seeing the Reader mode in Safari. This mode allows for a simpler view when reading text-heavy web pages, like news papers. For more information on this, you may find the following article helpful:
Hide ads when reading articles in Safari on Mac - Apple Support
If this happens persistently on the same websites, and you are not clicking on the horizontal lines icon in the address bar, you may have the Reader option turned on for those sites. This allows you to set certain sites to default to the Reader view, if for example if you go to your daily newspaper each morning and prefer that view. You can see how to check for that in this article:
Change Websites preferences in Safari on Mac - Apple Support
Please don't hesitate to let us know if the steps resolved your issue or if you need additional assistance.
Cheers.