Return to the home page



MSIE: WTF, where are my pages going?

-      Ok, this drove me up the wall for months. I made a page with iFrames, one had links that loaded new content into another iFrame. I noticed peculiar behaviour in MSIE, as opposed to FireFox. I could click my link, and the anoying ''CLICK'' sound could be heard, but once in a while, no page was loaded?!?!?!

Picture this...
- {Click-link, Click-sound, New-page-shown}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, New-page-shown}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, No-change}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, New-page-shown}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, New-page-shown}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, New-page-shown}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, No-change}

-      Ok, so WTF is the problem... There are no page errors, and it does the same in JAVASCRIPT as it does with HARD-CODED HTML-LINKS. Pulling out my hair for over three months, I was able to find nothing on this issue. However, take note, using this line of code as the link-control, helped out a LOT...

<IMG SRC="..." onMouseUp="PageLoadScript(); return false;">

-      So, what was causing all this trouble? Look at the code above, with this new addition to the ''FLOW'' of operation, as MSIE runs.

- {Click-link, Click-sound, (Request-page, Page-done, Nav-complete), New-page-shown}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, (Request-page, Page-done, Um...), New-page-shown}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, (Stop-Navigation), No-change}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, (Request-page, Page-done, Nav-complete), New-page-shown}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, (Request-page, Page-done, Nav-complete), New-page-shown}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, (Request-page, Page-done, Um...), New-page-shown}
- {Click-link, Click-sound, (Stop-Navigation), No-change}

In a nut-shell, browsing has these steps.
- (Stop-navigation) {Stops any page loading, if one is loading.}
- (Fetch-new-page) {Requests a page from a server}
- (Display-page-as-it-loads) {This is an option controlled setting, ''Auto-complete pages''}
- (Trigger-onLoad-event) {This tells the code in the page, ''I am done loading''}
- (Close-connection) {This disconnects from the server, and stops the ''LOADING'' animation.}
- (Tell-self-page-is-complete) {Does a screen refresh, and awaits next page-load.)

-      Seems that sometimes MSIE never does the last part, if the (Close-connection) bugs-out. Though the connection was closed, for some reason, MSIE doesn't process it. Which translates into... This page is still loading, though hours could have passed. Also, a nature of the browser, is to STOP NAVIGATION if you click the same link on a loading page, then it MIGHT try to load it again. (Stupid function) I say stupid, because it is about a 1/4 chance of NOT WORKING, and only the STOP NAVIGATION happens. This is where my problem was. Since the page NEVER seemed to CLOSE, it ALWAYS did a STOP NAVIGATION, and 1/4 of the time, it would just stop... not even try to load the page it was just told to load. (Because the link never changes, it is essentially a REFRESH. (Same link clicked over and over.)

-      So, the solution! Stupid solution, but it works. I just had to make that onMouseUp function, load "blank.htm", then load the real page. Now, no more ''RELOAD'', and when the (STOP NAVIGATION) fails, it fails on the "blank.htm", which is an internal file, not an actual page. This, in turn, forces my page to load correctly. (This does not result in double-page-calls to a website, because the page is an internal command of all browsers, it acts like a reset button.)