Occasionally when refreshing a page (usually RAT), here at PM, the page is displayed, but weirdly. Everything is displayed but (for example), the RAT (Recently Active Threads) page is displayed as: 

+/- Questions (Top) 

mod_perl, getting filename or mime type (A:1)+/-                      
+   [pingo]



Re: mod_perl, getting filename or mime type                           
+   [Joost]


Event::RPC -err (A:2/1)+/-                                         [op
+ensourcer]

[download]

instead of: 

+/- Questions (Top) 
mod_perl, getting filename or mime type (A:1)+/- [pingo]
  Re: mod_perl, getting filename or mime type [Joost]

Event::RPC -err (A:2/1)+/- [opensourcer]
...

[download]

Ie. With lots of extra whitespace, the username pushed way over to the right and the colors all screwy.

After the page has mostly loaded and is displayed in the weird state, the status bar shows that it is still waiting for something to be downloaded. This persists for a few seconds before timing out.

I assume that the problem is that I am not receiving some part of the css markup.

The situation will sometimes clear itself after a refresh, but often not. Sometimes it will clear if I go to a different page and then back to RAT. Sometimes, the problem won't go away until I disconnect and reconnect to my ISP.

The problem has been around for a year, maybe two, but only occurs occasionally and generally clears itself, so I just put it down to my using a less popular browser and ignored it.

Today it happened again and I noticed something I had never noticed before. Whatever the browser is waiting for to be downloaded, is being requested from permonks.org (when I logged onto perlmonks.com). I went to a command session and attempted to ping perlmonks.org and the ping failed. I tried several refreshes and several pings and the situation persisted, so I dis/re-connected to my ISP and tried again. The ping worked immediately and a refresh of RAT immediately cured the problem.

I conclude the real problem is that either my browser, my machine or my ISP has a DNS caching problem--something for me to investigate and try and fix.

However, without professing any expertise for html serving, wouldn't it be better if everything for any given server page was served from the same server?

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

In reply to Cross server markup by BrowserUk

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