IE5x & https, time-outs loading site...

I am having a problem with a previous site my colleagues and I have developed awhile back.

For users with INternet Explorer version 5 to 5.5, when the site goes secure (https), pages will not load. I have tracked the problem down to something to do with the way stylesheets are loaded. I am not sure how this could affect the loading of the pages in https as opposed to http. Whenever I remove the stylesheet links, the pages load fine in https.

There is no problem loading these pages on any other browser. Both IE6, 7 work fine in both http and https, as well as all other browsers (Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konquerer for both PC and Mac).

I cannot figure out what in the method of calling style sheets could be tripping up IE5. I use the standdard method:

Code: Select all

<link href="/shared/css/user_id/default.css" title="Standard" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

The moment I remove the stylesheet links, the pages load fine in https.

I have combed the net for info and am unable to find anything on this problem anywhere.

If anyone has experience with this or could give helpful advice, I would much appreciate it.

<link href="../shared/css/user_id/default.css"

I think depending on the document structure say it is in root>css then you could do ../css/foo.css. I think thats right, anyway I need some coffee but give it a whirl.

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Thanks for the suggestion moojoo,

It is not a problem of the style sheets' path though. The path is correct as I have tried both relative and absolute paths, with both http and https. It is a problem of linking to 'any' stylesheets for IE5.x in https only.

Well pfft. I have no answer for ya. Shows what a noob I am =).

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Thanks for the suggestions and the effort though

This may sound silly but have you tried removing all the files from the server and re uploading them? I once had a problem similar. The pages would display but the css never would take. That fixed it. Alternately all I can think of is maybe there is something screwed up in the css itself that chokes IE 5? Like a missing ; or }?

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No, compared to some of the things I have already tried, it does not sound silly... Although what you suggest would involve thousands of files, so a complete push of all the files from the development to the live servers would be quite a big deal and require some down time.

As far as the css itself, I have tried alternately dropping out the css files one by one. The problem does not come from any one particular file. It comes from calling any of the css files at all. I will have to go through each of the stylesheets manually and check the css against a validator for the css profile that IE5 is compatible with I think. Hmmm, alot of very long stylesheets to go through though.



UPDATE: I have further tested the css files and have found:

1. having more than about 200 or so lines in the css file seems to make IE5.x choke in https
2. having selector names with multiple underscores seems to cause problems as well (example: .text_card_ref)

I don't understand why these details would only affect IE5.x in https and not in http...

I am even more confused than I was before!

I apologize if my reply is useless because I didn't read the rest of the thread...

Anyway, I had a similar problem before and as it turns out, it was a problem on the client's IE security settings. Just go to Internet Options, and under security, choose 'default settings' for every security level.

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Diego - Web-Developer & London SEO Expert
jQuery Plugins: Multiple File Upload, Star Rating, FCKEditor | NEW: XML to JSON

Ya know, that is such a simple solution I have done before lol. Yeah I would try that. Also set the caching to "Every Visit To Page" instead of Automatic etc..

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Thanks for your suggestion, spinal. Unfortunately, the problem occurs no matter what the security settings are in IE5. I am using a vmware virtual machine with a clean version of Win98 installed for testing this problem. All security settings are at their defaults. The problem affects a small percentage of our user base, various office networks where users do not have admin priviledges over the settings on their machines. Personally, I don't know why the network admins have not upgraded the browsers to IE6 as its certainly more secure and up to date with features. Anyhow, I have to cater for this lowest common denominator, as not doing so would be foresaking whatever that small percentage of users are.

UPDATE:
Sorry I haven't posted the resolution to this up until now in the forum. Perhaps my solution will help others with a similar problem. As it turns out, there is a bug in IE5.x with server side compression in https. Turning off the compression for https resloved the problem for us. I believe you can also sniff the browser version and turn it off this way in Apache.

Chris

Hey Chris,
Thanks for posting the solution. If only everyone was so sonsiderate....

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Diego - Web-Developer & London SEO Expert
jQuery Plugins: Multiple File Upload, Star Rating, FCKEditor | NEW: XML to JSON