deadnancy has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello, Monks.

I'm not sure if this is an appropriate question (or even in the right place), but I'm not sure where to go. Yes; newbie.

I just launched a small perl-driven site for an artists' group I'm a part of. The private content management side works great (thanks to you all! and the llama book! and I use CGI; honest!), but the public viewer scripts give me an odd problem: IE for Windows executes the script, writes the HTML, then seems to stall after loading a few images from the site (status bar: 'Downloading picture:... Try 'view current galleries' a couple times to see). Eventually the browser stops loading images for any site. Closing and reopening IE starts the process over.

HTTP code 304 might somehow to be involved.

The rub is that the same site and code work with no problems on IE and Safari on a Mac. Same with Netscape/Mozilla/Camino/Firebird and Opera under OS X and Windows. (Haven't tried Linux yet.) Damn that 80% market share!

Ueber-common search terms make for fruitless Googling. Is this something really obvious? I'd love to RTFM; point me in the right direction? The HTML written by the perl scripts is available at the site; would chunks of the code that write it be important?

Thanks for your time.

Dead Nancy

p.s. Yes, I use JavaScript (to load content in multiple frames). I like frames. I do not apologize!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: strange Windows IE behavior
by NetWallah (Canon) on Sep 21, 2003 at 23:19 UTC
    Are your images made on a Mac using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 ? If so, the following may apply :

    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817177

    Image Files Do Not Appear When You View a Web Page with Internet Explorer 6 SP1
    This article applies to…

    SYMPTOMS
    When you use Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to view a Web page that contains image files, you may experience the following behavior: Some of the images do not appear on the Web page. Internet Explorer may no longer display images until you restart the program.

    CAUSE
    This problem may occur if you view a Web page that references an image that was saved from Adobe Photoshop 7.0 on Macintosh OS 10.

[reply]
Re: strange Windows IE behavior
by samtregar (Abbot) on Sep 22, 2003 at 02:37 UTC
    Assuming NetWallah didn't nail your problem, here's a few things to try:

    • Look at your server's error and access logs. Is there anything interesting there when the problem occurs?
    • Turn on IE's Javascript error popup and debugging. They default to off in modern versions of IE.
    • Try to boil down the problem to smaller and smaller HTML files that still trigger the behavior. You might find that there's something simple you can change to avoid the problem.
    • Post your question somewhere HTML and browser gurus hang out. They know all kinds of things that we don't. No, I don't know where they hang out.

    -sam

[reply]
Re: strange Windows IE behavior
by deadnancy (Novice) on Sep 23, 2003 at 16:33 UTC
    NetWallah, you rock!

    That's the problem. Some of my users (including me) were using Photoshop 7 for OS X. Looking into the files, it appears Photoshop 7 adds XML to the JPEG files which cause IE to fail.

    THANK YOU!

    Dead Nancy
[reply]
      Belated follow up: Using 'Save for web...' in Photoshop eliminates the problem. Dead Nancy
[reply]

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