Occasional blank pages in IE6

[Joey33]

Hello,

Problem: you click a link and see a blank page. The address bar shows old url and status bar says it's loaded. Only after refresh does the desired page load. It's only IE6 (standalone version). The customer says it's repeating at a few people that visited the website.

I've searched through forums high and low and here's the summary of all solutions and my 20h fight:

1. register core .dll files/repair IE6
ok, I did that. No change. And besides, how is possible that a few people corrupted IE6 at the same time?

2. proxy caching
ok, I added:

header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT")
no change.

3. watch for open <script src=""> tags and close them with </script>
no change.

4. MS site - untick 'http 1.1 settings' in IE6.

ok, the problem is gone. But I cannot force visitors to tamper with advanced settings. They will sooner accuse me of incompetence.
BTW is it possible to force Http to work in ver 1.0?

Finally I decided to gradually chop down the code to find the guilty part. And here's the most absurd stuff: When I deleted the charset=iso... from meta section the problem was gone. Of course I need codepage declared so I sent the same heading with php head() function....

I'm glad it works for now since the customer is angry and waiting. But I'd like to understand the logic of this (if ie6 has any).

Have you had any similar experience and can dawn on me with any clue?

I've been with this business for a few years now and I thought IE would not surprise me with any absurdities any more..

Regards,
Joey33

[encyclo]

What was the exact code you removed to make it work? Often blank pages can happen when there's a scripting error and the server is set up to not show error messages to the screen - if you modify the error-reporting to echo to the screen you might get a clue. Also, does the server error log show anything?

[jdMorgan]

Are these SSL pages (HTTPS)?
What server is your site running on?

[Joey33]

to encyclo:

the part removed is charset declaration; I've had a call from the customer that the problem is gone at his pc too. who knows maybe I've come across a hack:)

to jdMorgan:

it is plain http and the server is Apache 2.0 / Linux 2192.v.tld.pl 2.6.22.22.p4smp.184 #1 SMP / PHP Version 5.2.4-0+tld0

but the same problem happened with another page on a different server (there blank pages came after clicking on a logo img) and the same worked so maybe I did find a hack..

regards,
joey33

[edited by: tedster at 8:53 pm (utc) on Aug. 24, 2008]

[Joey33]

Here is my 'hack' in detail:

I decided to gradually erase code lines to find the guilty part. And here's the most absurd stuff I discovered. I commented out the codepage from meta section:

<!-- <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-2" /> //-->

Tada! The problem was gone. Ok but you cannot leave the page with no codepage declared especially when it comes to localization. So I declared the codepage with PHP header() function:

header ("content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-2");

To my surprise the problem was still gone. I repeated the same with another page exposing the same absurd functioning and again that solved the problem.

If you find that my 'hack' works and it is indeed a repetitive solution let's call that Joeyhack if you don't mind.

I would be glad to make a small contribution to webdesigners community having learnt so much from such forums as this one.

Regards,
Konrad Tomaszewski (Joey33)

[jbinbpt]

Any php involved prior to the fix?

[Joey33]

yes, just a standard division into head.php and foot.php, both of them included into index.php - being the problematic main page.

to cast more light, when I saved the generated page's source code into a new single plain html file, uploaded onto the server and launched that, the problem did not exist.

[penders]

Hi Joey33, were you able to check the server error log as encyclo suggested?

[Joey33]

Oops sorry to encyclo, I was replying late night here in my timezone and totally overlooked the question. I'll try to get to the logs and post the result.

[Joey33]

ok I analyzed the logs and the server's response is 200, which should mean that the server sends the page but IE doesn't show it (only after refresh)

the log after clicking the link main_2.php on page main.php (IE shows blank page):

78.***.***.14 - - [30/Aug/2008:12:01:38 +0200] "GET /main_2.php HTTP/1.1" 200 630 "http:// url cut out for forum rules /main.php" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)" 400 1112 toxicb 13 3 0 0

BTW: no idea what the numbers after url mean, any hint? toxicb is the ftp login (the rest I suppose is configured by the server admin?)

[edited by: tedster at 3:56 pm (utc) on Aug. 30, 2008]
[edit reason] anonymize the IP address [/edit]

[penders]

That looks like an entry from the access log, does the error log not contain anything in that period? Is 630 bytes about right for the size of page returned? Not sure what the last part (400 1112 toxicb 13 3 0 0) means.

You say a refresh [F5] makes IE display the page. Is this the same when you hit [Ctrl]+[F5] ?

[Joey33]

I've checked the error log first but nothing found relevant to that period.

The size is ok - I trimmed the file to just a few link and necessary code. There's only one img in the back going in a seperate request.

Ctrl+f5 is no difference. I suppose it's ie6 bug, when and why exactly it happens I've no idea but it's pain in the neck.

[penders]

I suppose it's ie6 bug, when and why exactly it happens I've no idea but it's pain in the neck.

It may be an IE6 peculiarity, but it still shouldn't happen. There must be some reasonable explanation?! If just one user sees this problem then it could be a browser config issue, but several unrelated users then there must be something that can be sorted in the code (or may be even the server)?

If you go to main_2.php directly by typing the URL, is that OK? (Is it just a problem when you follow a link? What if you follow a link from another page?)

Can you try your code on another server?

[Joey33]

quite a lot you gave me to check:) but ok I made it

direct typing the target url - no change
linking from another page - no change
placing the files on another server - (placed on two more different hosts) no change as well

I know this calls for logical explanation but as for now I'm glad it just works with my hack