Netscape display error w index.htm

[denby]

When I attempt to display my Home page (index.htm) in Netscape 7.1 it works fine if I enter http://www.example.com/ but not when I enter http://www.example.com/index.htm. I have no problems with IE or Opera. The faulty display seems to just ignore the HTML for the first 3/4 of the page. Why is it so?

[edited by: tedster at 9:11 pm (utc) on Aug. 8, 2004]
[edit reason] use example.com [/edit]

[tedster]

This is a really strange thing - I "might" have a clue if it was the other way around - could be a bad server setting. But you are reporting a bad rendering only when you use the full URI and point your brower directly to the resource. Very weird.

I looked for a bit around the web but found nothing comparable. Plus, I've got 7.2 (which I rarely fire up) so I can't try to reproduce the effect.

Some questions that come to mind:

1. When you see the partial page, can you use View Source?
2. Is the HTML validated?

<later thought>
Does your server have two versions of the page? Like one at index.html and one at index.htm?

[denby]

Well it gets wierder.... I've done some hunting and decided to try inserting an explicit encoding header:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

and the problem disappeared. Now being an incurably curious geek, I removed the amendment and refreshed the display but .... the problem did NOT reappear. <sigh> Wot does it all mean?

In answer to your questions:

I was able to view the source.
The page was not fully validated for Transitional 4.01.
There is no "index.html".

I would love to know what was going on (maybe it was the encoding) but this was the only page I had problems with (so far as I know). It is also the only page on my site with the name "index.htm" that has any real content: all the others are just placeholders to prevent folder listing by curious types. Ah well, must move on.

Thanks for your help.

[tedster]

Well, full validation isn't really required as long as the html is at least well formed - no improper nesting or unclosed tags and so on.

I guess for now we just file this under "we know it happened once".