IE6: random display failure

highway57 · #1 Feb 1st, 2006, 14:15

Oh dear - this might get a bit long, and I'm not even certain this is the best forum, so please someone point me to the right one if necessary!
Setup:
+ A new site at <http://touristguides.org.uk/>, mostly a searchable database, built with MySQL and PHP.
+ I've done my best to make it XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant - there are just a few minor errors left.
+ All pages are encoded in UTF-8 with no Byte Order Marker, shown in the correct <meta> tag.
+ All pages have the correct language attributes (both xml:lang and lang) in the <html> tag.
+ Each page has a header across the top, a sidebar down the left, the main content area to the right of the sidebar and a footer at the bottom - that's the order in which they load.
+ Each of these areas has rounded corners created by using nested <div>s.
Problem: while I'm getting plenty of compliments and glowing reports, I'm also getting reports from /some/ users that certain pages don't display properly. So far, the pages in question have been <http://touristguides.org.uk/advsearch>, <http://touristguides.org.uk/guidelogin> and another you can't see without logging in. Each of these pages has a form in the main content area, and what is happening is this: although, as far as I can tell, the whole page is /loading/ properly (this was confirmed when one user sent me the source code of the guidelogin page*), the main content area is blank - and it only has one rounded corner (top left), with the others all square. The users are seeing the footer as it should be, after the content area loads.
Worse problem:
+ I can't reproduce this behaviour! I have IE6 in XP on my ThinkPad, and every page behaves just fine for me.
+ The problem happens for just a few random IE6 users, and on different pages.
Solution?: Please!
Meanwhile I'm recommending people to use Firefox which of course displays the whole site just as I intend, but obviously that's hardly a solution for the world at large.
* Even weirder: I did cure the login page for this particular user... by removing a comma from the text! How can this be? I did every check I could think of to ascertain that no 'rogue' characters were present.
Is this any kind of known problem? I feel it has to be a CSS issue, but really I'm at a loss...

masonbarge · #2 Feb 1st, 2006, 16:43

Are you sure they are using IE 6, and not some earlier version? If so, the only thing I can think of is that they might have overridden your font style/type, or else for some reason their Verdana is buggy and they are showing the page in Arial or something.

Anyway, I have a strong suspicion that the problem is with font size, and that it's not the "font size" but the "font type" that is causing the lines to change length. That's just the sort of thing that could be cured by taking out a comma.

highway57 · #3 Feb 1st, 2006, 17:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by masonbarge

Are you sure they are using IE 6, and not some earlier version? If so, the only thing I can think of is that they might have overridden your font style/type, or else for some reason their Verdana is buggy and they are showing the page in Arial or something.
Anyway, I have a strong suspicion that the problem is with font size, and that it's not the "font size" but the "font type" that is causing the lines to change length. That's just the sort of thing that could be cured by taking out a comma.

Thanks - this is a nice thought, but in the interests of making my original post no longer than it already was, I didn't tell the whole story of that comma: on the way to identifying that, I tried commenting out lots of different bits of the code - in places whole bleeding chunks of it - and it still didn't display. Besides which, I've just tried one of the problem pages on my own Windows box, and it works fine at each of the available text sizes, even 'largest'. I'll give this further thought though!
And again with regard to the Mystery Comma, I checked the exact (preposterously long) version number of that user's IE and it was identical to mine! Virtually all her settings were too.

masonbarge · #4 Feb 3rd, 2006, 08:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by highway57

Thanks - this is a nice thought, but in the interests of making my original post no longer than it already was, I didn't tell the whole story of that comma: on the way to identifying that, I tried commenting out lots of different bits of the code - in places whole bleeding chunks of it - and it still didn't display. Besides which, I've just tried one of the problem pages on my own Windows box, and it works fine at each of the available text sizes, even 'largest'. I'll give this further thought though!
And again with regard to the Mystery Comma, I checked the exact (preposterously long) version number of that user's IE and it was identical to mine! Virtually all her settings were too.

Did you check the accessibility settings?

highway57 · #5 Feb 4th, 2006, 15:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by masonbarge

Did you check the accessibility settings?

Hmmm. Not being a habitual Windows user ( in fact I avoid it at all costs, apart from necessary testing of my work!) I hadn't thought to look into this. However, I've now looked to see exactly what these settings are, and unless her own style sheet is identical to that on the site, I would say she hasn't touched them. In other words, the pages (the ones that worked!) looked exactly as I'm accustomed to seeing them on my own machines. So thanks again, but I don't think that's the problem.

Ward · #6 Feb 5th, 2006, 08:54

Can see it myself on IE 6.0.20 running on xpsp2. The problem occurs when the browser size reduces to just above 800px wide when the main content box stops reducing in size, goes blank and remove 3 of the rounded corners, same happens in my test version of ie5.5 both these running on my main pc, yet my laptop it is fine?? Only difference is Product ID of IE6, one ends in -00110 (has problems) the other -00101 is ok. PM me for a .jpg of the problem as taken from browsercam.com.

Ward · #7 Feb 5th, 2006, 09:39

Sent you a pm direct with attach.

highway57 · #8 Feb 6th, 2006, 15:24

Yes, with invaluable help from Ward, the bug has been (more or less) squashed. It turned out that commas, italics and so on were red herrings and it was all down to a window width problem - the bug exhibited itself when the window got too narrow.

Various tweaks of the CSS got it to the point where the content no longer disappeared, but instead, if the window was too narrow, the main content dropped to below the level of the bottom of the sidebar.

So at least it was still there and functional, and the rest seemed to be down to the content itself, which I've adjusted in a number of ways so that now the window has to be seriously narrow for the problem to occur - so narrow as to be unlikely enough that I don't feel I have to worry too much, even though the behaviour in IE/Win is still wrong. No other browser I've tried, including IE/Mac, does it.

It may well be that there's some other tweak I can apply to stop the problem altogether, and if I find it of course I'll apply it, but I'm no longer panicking about it!

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IE6: random display failure