Redirects incompatible w/ IE 5.2 for Mac?

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Redirects incompatible w/ IE 5.2 for Mac?

ichthyous

1:38 pm on Aug 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

Hi there,

My site uses redirects fairly heavily. I was surprised to see that Internet Explorer 5.2 for the Mac simply won't redirect. When a visitor hits a page it just sits there even though the redirect is set to 0 seconds. Sometimes the redirect will deploy after a few seconds, sometimes on the second or third click. Does anyone know of any workarounds for this? As it stands I am losing all of my Mac visitors using IE, which is about 4% of my traffic. Thanks

jdMorgan

1:58 pm on Aug 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

Don't confuse HTTP redirects which are server-side responses to client requests, with on-page HTML meta-refreshes which are strictly client-side. I can't answer for the specific Mac IE5 problem, but you could in fact use a true server-generated redirect to steer Mac users to another page. This would act like a zero-second meta-refresh.

Jim

ichthyous

2:11 pm on Aug 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

Yes, I am using HTML meta refeshes. Sorry for the terminology mix up. I have a site which uses dynamic pages that the SEs can't crawl, so I use a separate set of HTML pages for the SEs and redirect the visitors to the right dynamic page. How would I deploy a server side redirect in this case? Would I have to configure my .htaccess file to do this as a 301 redirect? I'm not too sure that that would work in this instance. Please explain what you are referring to. Thanks

amznVibe

2:17 pm on Aug 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

meta redirects are very sensitive to correct syntax

change the url to example.com and show us what you are using

you should also backup the meta redirect with a javascript redirect which will happen instantly

<script type="text/javascript">
window.location.replace('http://example.com/blah/')
</script>

jdMorgan

2:30 pm on Aug 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

Try a search on WebmasterWorld for "search engine friendly URL" and "rewrite static dynamic URL" for tons of info on how to set things up so that your dynamically-generated pages are easily crawlable by SE spiders. BTW, WebmasterWorld is a dynamic site, but easily crawlable.

Implementing a correct, site-wide solution that makes your dynamic page URLs look like they're static might be a bit of work, but it will prevent you from having to have a bunch of "point fixes" for all these "side-effect" problems.

Jim

ichthyous

2:34 pm on Aug 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

Hi there,

Thanks for the response...Here is the meta refresh code I am using. IE 5 for the mac is the only browser that has probs with it. Would I put the javascript on the same page along with this code?

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://mysite.com/Qstore/Qstore.cgi?CMD=008&DEPT=1021236984&CAT=1060144925">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#000000">
</body>
</html>

ichthyous

5:00 pm on Aug 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

I was told by the company that created the store that I am using that implementing some sort of dynamic to static page code would render the store useless. Is that possible?

amznVibe

11:38 am on Aug 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

That code looks okay. Like I suggested, backup the meta refresh with the javascript redirect and you'll catch most users. The benefit of the javascript redirect is that it happens the moment it's come across by the browser vs. the meta will wait for the entire page to load, then redirect.