No problems in firefox or IE7 but when I try to access my site through IE6 it just takes me to a blank white page. I have tried emptying and turning off cache and neither have been successful. I'm not sure if this is a problem specific to the spreadfirefox theme but I've searched drupal and other people who had similar problems were able to solve them by turning of the cache.

Is anyone else having this problem? Does anyone have a solution?

The site is http://chibabeat.com

Comments

orionvortex’s picture

orionvortex commented

I am now almost positive that this is an issue with the spreadfirefox theme because I tested a 4.7 version of the spreadfirefox theme with a 5.x version of drupal and the theme began to load in IE 6 until there was an error due to the difference in versions. But anyways, if the site began to load that would mean that my problem is originating with the theme. Isn't anyone else having this problem with IE 6?

orionvortex’s picture

orionvortex commented

Does anyone have a solution to this problem?

johnalbin’s picture

johnalbin
they/他
Primary language English
Location Taipei, Taiwan
commented

Josh, try changing the "Caching mode" from "Normal (recommended, no side effects)" to "Disabled"

I was having the same issue with a different theme and that worked for me.

johnalbin’s picture

johnalbin
they/他
Primary language English
Location Taipei, Taiwan
commented
Title: Blank white screen in IE6, Drupal 5.x » White Screen for IE6 users only (with normal caching mode)
Project: SpreadFirefox » Drupal core
Version: 5.x-1.0 » 5.x-dev
Component: Code » base system
Category: support » bug
Priority: Normal » Critical

After some investigation, I discovered this is not theme specific. I get the same error with Garland.

Josh, the reason the 4.7 version "worked" is because Drupal never served cached pages due to the errors that were being generated.

Here’s a fuller bug description:

IE6 users are seeing a completely white screen instead of the page content after returning to a page that they had previously viewed. Steps to reproduce:

  1. On a Drupal 5.2 site, set "Caching mode" to "Normal (recommended, no side effects)".
  2. Use IE6 to visit the homepage for the first time ever. The content is visible as expected.
  3. Click a link for a different page. This content is also visible.
  4. Click a link for the homepage. IE6 will now display a completely white screen.

This only happens with IE6. It does not happen on Safari, IE7, or Firefox. (I haven't tested IE5.)

When viewing the source of the white screen, IE6 shows:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1242"></HEAD>
<BODY></BODY></HTML>

Note that the active theme, Garland, is actually an XHTML doc. So IE6 seems to be self-generating the white screen.

If I turn off the "Caching mode" by changing it from "Normal (recommended, no side effects)" to "Disabled", then IE6 can see the site.

I suspect that this is a bug in IE6 involving something that is being generated by the _drupal_cache_init() bootstrap code ( http://api.drupal.org/api/function/_drupal_cache_init/5 ). Unfortunately, I’m not familiar enough with cache control to investigate further.

I’m setting this to critical since IE6 users can’t access the site with normal caching.

JirkaRybka’s picture

JirkaRybka commented

I think this IE bug is probably still triggered with some theme-dependent things involved. On my site (5.1 - custom theme - normal caching mode) I can't reproduce the problem on IE6 (nor any other browser I have access to).

johnalbin’s picture

johnalbin
they/他
Primary language English
Location Taipei, Taiwan
commented

Jiří, I’m glad that its not affecting everyone.

But it disturbs me that Garland is affected. Of course, it could be system dependent, but I have seen this on my MacOSX systems and on a GoDaddy hosted account.

Can someone test the Garland theme/normal caching/IE6 combo on their own system?

JirkaRybka’s picture

JirkaRybka commented

Can you please post a link to any site, where this happens? Unfortunately, I've IE6 only at work (no chance to set up local test-environment), at home I'm on Linux... Now I tried to browse quite a few sites from the 'Drupal showcase' with IE6, and no problem at all. Internet Explorer 6.0.2900.2180 etc. etc. - SP2, Win XP.

If I knew how and where to reproduce, I might be able to play with IE settings or test-HTML files a bit, otherwise I'm no help here :(

johnalbin’s picture

johnalbin
they/他
Primary language English
Location Taipei, Taiwan
commented
Priority: Critical » Normal

I just created a fresh Drupal5 install on a different system and I can’t reproduce the problem. I’m going to have to investigate what the differences are between the 2 systems (one has the problem.)

bobberal’s picture

bobberal commented

It seems that you fixed the problem... how did you do it?

sage2046’s picture

sage2046 commented

i have the exactly the same problem as JohnAlbin has described . I disabled the caching mode, everything works properly now, but i wonder if i turned the caching mode into "Aggressive " will this problem still occur? and i have enabled modules which are incompatible with aggressive mode caching and will not function properly,according to the bold red warning ,such as content, globalredirect, gsitemap, logintoboggan, robotstxt, statistics, throttle, token, almost all of these modules are enabled in my site
i think disabling the caching mode is the last option, anyone here could offer a better solution??

travel-diaries.info’s picture

travel-diaries.info commented

I have a strange problem if I type man address in IE 6 www.something.com it comes up ok but if I refresh it comes blank and next time same thing blank, it comes normal only if I use (ctrl+F5) the crazy thing is that it works fine in Fierfox

It only happens when I am logout and trying to access the page as anonymous!!

So to be exact as possible you can open a page as anonymous for the first time you can even refresh or revisit the page but if you refresh or revisit it for the second time it shows blank and it will show up again only if you pres (ctrl+F5) and it works fine in Fierfox
Template aurora-5.x-1.2

P.S.

It seams I found the problem-solution so for anybody ells or fro any body who can tell me a better solution pleas answer!!

The problem was >>Caching mode<< it was on (Normal (recommended, no side effects)) well not really "no side effects" so I changed it to Disable and it works fine now!!

Fordi’s picture

Fordi commented
Status: Active » Needs review

check http://drupal.org/node/227294

johnalbin’s picture

johnalbin
they/他
Primary language English
Location Taipei, Taiwan
commented
Status: Needs review » Closed (duplicate)

Bryan, in the future, don't create a new, duplicate issue as a follow up to to an exisiting issue.

There's 2 problems with doing that:

  1. If there's one bug, we don't need 2 issues with separate discussions.
  2. None of the people who are getting email updates to this issue will know anything about the discussion in the new issue (which, 4 months later, actually has tons of useful information in it; none of which we knew about.)

I didn't even read the other issue until today. I had originally ignored your comment because you don't say why anyone should check that URL. “patch (code needs review)” means you are attaching a patch to this issue, not that you should go check out a patch somewhere else. See http://drupal.org/node/156119 for proper use of status levels.

I'm marking this issue as a duplicate of #227294: Normal caching mode causes white screen for IE6 because others have contributed more data about this bug in that issue.