Windows Glitch opening Photo.net... Anyone else?

Is anyone else experiencing a glitch when trying to open Photo.net

with Windows Explorer? I get a message telling me Explorer can't

open the URL and Operation is Aborted. When I click the OK button

the page disappears and I get the normal page that appears when a

wrong URL is tried. The message appears right after I open a

poster's question and then I just hit the back button to return back

to the list of current postings and proceed as normal. No more

problems. It happens everytime I open Photo.net. I'm using XP Home

and the latest Explorer. This problem started about a month ago, I'm

guessing. It only happens with P.net.

 

Sound familiar to anyone else?

 

Gup.

Yeah, I get the same problem on my computer at work. Which doesn't surprise me, considering the lousy systems we have and the fact that its Explorer. I've switched to Mozilla for photonet and it works fine.

Yeah, happens on occasion, not consistently. It's also not uncommon to have a little error message that says "Opened but with errors" even when everything looks okay. This with XP and IE.

Photo.net site or hosting web server has some unfixed problem.

 

The link below describes it, and that link when open - will have another link to yet an older story on the same subject.

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00GL2S

Try this thread, I think the ball is in PN's court:-> <A HREF="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00GPP4"> Getting IE Error on Photo.Net </A>

I have no problems with IE6 on W2k at work or WXP SP2 at home.

 

Strange that it should affect some but not others.

"...Strange that it should affect some but not others..."

 

The problem appears to be intermittent. It's a PN problem, not IE. Paying members don't have to chnage to Mozilla/Firefox just because someone can't fix the problem.

It is probably going to be a while for me to fix this problem, because I can't reproduce it. It doesn't affect all visitors with IE, and those who are affected see it only on certain forum threads, and even on those threads, only intermittently.

 

My hypothesis is that it is caused by an interaction between the Javascript code on those pages. Javascript code on photo.net pages comes not only from photo.net but also many of the ads involve Javascript code from third-party ad servers. So, the problem might only appear if there is a particular ad, or combination of ads, on the page. Until I figure out which ads are involved (assuming this theory is true), I can't do much about this. If my theory is right, there is a good chance that the problem will just go away by itself when the offending ad comes to the end of its run.

 

It may be "ridiculous" as Vladimir persists in saying in his comments on every thread where this problem has been reported, but if you have IE and can't live with this problem, then the only real workaround at this point is to use a different browser, such as Firefox, Safari, or Opera. I have the impression so far that the problem is "livable-with", since people report that a page refresh or two generally clears things up. Its easy for me to say that, though, since I haven't seen the problem myself. If you can't live with this problem, I'd like to hear from you.

 

I'm not pointing people towards these other browsers because I think they are better than IE, but because they don't seem to have the problem. Having said that, I do happen to think that these are better browsers, and photo.net is designed for them first, especially Firefox, and then the code is tweaked to workaround IE 6 issues. IE 6 has a low reputation among Web developers for standards compliance, and as more developers (including the people at ad agencies) write code assuming "standards compliant" browsers, we can expect to see more problems involving IE. Previously, people wrote first for IE, and many still adopt that approach. But things seems to have tipped in the last year or two, even though IE is still the dominant browser. That is just my opinion, though, and you are perfectly entitled to think that I don't know anything about browsers.

By the way, if there is anybody who can regularly reproduce this problem and is willing to work with me over the phone on troubleshooting it, I'd love to hear from you.

Thank God Brian is not running other sites, we'd all have to use Opera on Macs, all vegetarian and recycled

Various posting found by searching Google indicate that Javascript that attempts to make modifications to the document object model (eg, the tabs/menus at the top) before they are completely rendered will cause this problem.

 

I can't duplicate this right now, but I believe it's possible the errors would crop up on slower machines, or when the server is heavily loaded, and there is a short delay in transmitting the complete page, AND the user's cursor is over top of the menus.

 

The solution is to put the javascript at the end of the page, so it can't execute until the page is loaded completely. Give it a shot and see what happens.

Brian could use some help with ACTUAL data from folks, ie what browser, what rev of browser, what thread the "problem" occured, are folks running virus software, do folks clear out their cache, what OS is used. Normally in real engineering actual data is used to solve problems, not whining.<BR><BR> Photo.net seems full of whining. Months ago they complained about adverts and popups, and almost all the whiners could not mention the advert, what thread, what browser they were using. I never say any problems at all. Maybe this is just a mental block creative types have with details. <BR><BR>Here since the recent whining about IE started I have tried here to get it to fail, with no luck at all for many days, using nt4, win2000, win98se tonight with IE6. <BR><BR>Tonight I DID get a failure using IE 6, XP pro with all SP2 and IE updates. This was with laptop IBM T30 on dialup. This occured after peeking at several dozen threads. It BARFED on a large format thread about making larger prints, the screen shot shots the threads title. I was running the freebie AVG free, version.<BR><BR>Here I normally dont use the dog manure buggy microsoft IE, but use Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 usually, sometime the newer versions too. <BR><BR>Whats interesting is thatit took about 8 hours of using IE on Pnet over several days to finally get an actual failure, using about 4 computers. <BR><BR>Folks strive to give Brian some actual data, thread, OS, browser.<BR><BR><img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/PNdesktop/iecrapcopy.gif">

The laptop above that barfed isnt really slow, its a 1.8Ghz laptop I have with 1 gig of ram and a fast HDA settup that I often use for photoshop, or scanning. This barfed with on my slower 2nd phone line, one that goes thru a slick and is capped at 26.4Kbps. Task manager is just at a few percent when on the web.

Looking at the Javascript for the photo.net header, it appears to have an elegant solution to ensure that the page is in fact loaded before any menu scripting becomes operational.

 

So, to quote Gilda Radner: "never mind".

Funny, it happen again, while visiting this thread.

Heres a screen shot of the warning.

I can't get it to do it on command, its completely random for me.

The computer I'm on is running NT and Explorer 6.0, I have no idea what sort of virus protection we're running. Every thing is handled by the company servers. I haven't had this problem from my home computer.

Ahhh... I meant XP not NT.

Brian, downloading images is a problem, and as you noted it might be a javascript issue. I started having the problem(s) after downloading some Microsoft upgrade and changing to IE7 BETA. (its a dog with mange) here is a sample of how the downloads fail<div></div>

John

I started to have the same problem about 3 days ago. I've tried everything and have decided it's not at my end it must be something PN. Don't have this problem on any other site.

Looks like our calls for help are falling on deaf ears. I can only guess that PN's code is too old, needs to be rewritten from scratch and they don't have a budget for it. Their advice to "get firefox" is nothing but a desperate attempt to divert attention.

Looks like our calls for help are falling on deaf ears. I can only guess that PN's code is too old, needs to be rewritten from scratch and they don't have a budget for it. Their advice to "get firefox" is nothing but a desperate attempt to divert attention.

 

No matter how I dislike dpreview.com, it looks more and more like a viable membership option in the long term... What a pity

It really is apparently an IE 6 bug. However, everything I can find says that moving the javascript code to the end of the page fixes it, as it has something to do with the timing of the rendering and the interaction of the javascript which modifies the page.

 

The code dealing with the menu does exactly that. So move the following to before the </body> tag and I'll bet a year's subscription that it resolves the problem. Brian: If I'm wrong - pick a deserving person and I'll gift them "the gift".

 

--- this is the code to move ----

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">

sfHover = function() {

 

[snipped for brevity; include all of the code]

 

if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload",sfHover);

</script>

I guess photo.net has no plans to correct the problems with the site so I'll pack my bags and leave. I wish the owners of this site would have posted something about the site only working with firefox prior to excepting my money.

It amazing how folks are so in love with an totally inferior amateur browser like IE that has holes. I vist Photo.net alot; and use several different browsers, usually firefox mozilla. IE is a dog manure browser, that tracks alot of crap when visting websites. Alot of these IE holes are not well understood, since you beloved Microsoft is constantly futzing, patching its dog manure product. Microsoft doesnt even understand its dog manure IE product. A security patch often requires another patch, then another, then another. Why support such a buggy amateur product?