Problem loading with IE - what on earth is it thinking about

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by travelfish, Apr 25, 2006.

  1. #1
    I've got an odd problem that I have only seen with IE (using Ver 6.0). When the site is requested, IE hums and whirls and spits out the background colour (a pale blue) and then in the status bar it says "done". There's then a pause and it starts whirling again loading loading, thinking thinking, then bang the whole page appears in one hit.

    The problem is this pause between the pale blue background and the rest of the stuff suddenly appearing can be upwards of ten seconds...

    In Firefox and Opera it loads progressively (as it should)...

    Any idea on what may cause a problem like this?

    If it matters we're using the PHP ob_start("ob_gzhandler") to zip it up -- but my understanding was IE handles this fine...

    The site is http://www.travelfish.org

    Tks in advance
     
    travelfish, Apr 25, 2006 IP
  2. Danny

    Danny Active Member

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    #2
    I am going to take a punt and say somewhere in your code you are using Youngpup.net's Sleight plugin.

    It appears this plugin causes an IE freeze when re-rendering the images.

    There are 2 ways to fix this

    1 - Cut your losses and dont use transparent PNG's then remove or turn of Sleight in your script

    2 - Ask all IE uses to go to
    Tools >> Interenet Options >> Temporary Internet Files >> Settings >> Check for newer versions of stored pages

    Change this option to "Never" or "Automatic" and the site will not freeze any longer.

    This will work however you run the risk of annoying and losing visitors when the page freezes until they change this option.

    The best idea is just to disable Sleight and then your pages will not freeze.

    If you are not sure what Sleight is, it is a script that renders transparent PNG's correctly in IE as IE does not handle this.

    Dan
     
    Danny, Apr 27, 2006 IP
  3. travelfish

    travelfish Peon

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    #3
    Hi Danny,

    Thanks, but we're not using that plugin anywhere in the site, nor are we using any pngs. Will keep digging - tks anyways
     
    travelfish, Apr 28, 2006 IP
  4. Danny

    Danny Active Member

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    #4
    are you positive. Because the error looks identical.

    Are you using a CMS or a prebuilt script to run your site?
     
    Danny, Apr 30, 2006 IP
  5. travelfish

    travelfish Peon

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    #5
    Hi Danny,

    Yes am sure - cms is totally custom built (by me) I wrote every line of code in the site and had never heard of a sleight plug-in till you mentioned it
     
    travelfish, Apr 30, 2006 IP
  6. Danny

    Danny Active Member

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    #6
    if you change the IE cache settings do you still get the issue.

    If not then we may be able to find a work around by using the PHP cache functions
     
    Danny, Apr 30, 2006 IP
  7. travelfish

    travelfish Peon

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    #7
    Just tried - still get the same problem -- it I set cache to automatically, still get the same delay, change to never, still same delay...
     
    travelfish, Apr 30, 2006 IP
  8. Danny

    Danny Active Member

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    #8
    It is working ok on my 2 home computers in IE. I will have a look from work in the morning
     
    Danny, May 1, 2006 IP