The dynamic pages are not timing out, and it looks like overall load time of the page is not slowed down when the problem with the images not loading occurs. The problem occurs server wide on different domains using different scripts. We've had the same problem on another server so it looks like it's not machine specific.
Can anyone think of a cause/solution for this?
Are the image tags fully formed in both types of pages? ..
i.e. with H & W & Alt tags etc and the paths exactly correct ..
and are you 100% sure that there are absolutely no errors creeping into the page code on the dynamicaly generated pages?
If there are no errors then it may be some timing issue and I would be interested to hear the answers of someone who knows as I will likely cross this issue in the next months.
>100% sure that there are absolutely no errors creeping into the page code on the dynamicaly generated pages?
yes
Yes it's a weird problem. Maybe it doesn't even happen once in 20 times but more like once in 40 times, with only a few of the images on a page (not always the same images though)... so it 's kind of hard to test. A reload of the page usually solves it.
I've known about the issue for years but never got around to fixing it as it's very tempting to think there's no problem after reloading a page 10 times and seeing all the images load fine. Still.. after all this time I have to conclude it's not an occasional glitch but really a genuine issue which only occurs on our dynamic pages.
When the problem occurs it is usually with only one or two of all images in that page, but I've never seen all images on a page to fail loading at the same time. For that reason I thought it's unlikely to be a timing issue. Also the pages do not seem to take longer to load when the problem occurs.
The images are usually inside a table and the image that fails often occurs more then once on the page (causing all occurences on the page to fail). They are typically small images, 1-2k.
It's usually an image that should be in my browsers cache I guess that fails ..as it usually occurs on sites I visit frequently. Often the images will load fine while browsing the site, untill one page does not load all images fully.. but using the same template and images as the other pages that loaded fine minutes earlier.
reading my own lines.. maybe I should look closer at my PC/browser and internet cache, my local machine has been the same the past years..
look closer at my PC/browser
that is where I would look first since you have the same problem on more than 1 server, the common thing is your browser. Is you temp. folder or drive full?
Browser versions have changed over time (though always IE), firewalls have, router has, and proxy servers have changed over time as well. Operating system stayed win2000 and machine hardware stayed the same.
I did read in another forum that IE has/had several bugs that affect the loading of images, particulary small images, but I do not think that explains my case.
I don't blame anyone for thinking it must be me who's seeing things that are not there.. :) ..
In my defense, some collegues have noticed the same thing, using different machines(but also win2000) on the same internet connection.
Other test data is not available at the moment (does the error occur with other browers, other OS etc. ) so I guess more testing is needed to start ruling things out.
Thanks guys.
If it's happinging more often on dynamic pages then it's because of the additional server load.
Every element in a web page is requested separately by the browser. So a page with basic html and 30 images means 30, almost simultaneous, requests from client to server after the initial page request. Your web server is dropping, not responding or responding too slowly to these requests on occasion.
If you were to move your site to a different host/network the problems would almost definitely disappear... Unless of course the problem is with your ISP, but I'm assuming you've checked that :-)
The only thing you can do without switching hosts is to try to cut down on the server load of your scripts and possibly the file size of your images.
