Why won't mdcalc.com load in IE7?

September 23, 2009 2:28 PM

Why won't my site load in some versions of IE7? Works in everything else.

Recently I've been getting emails from hospital IT departments that my site doesn't load in their version of IE7, but loads in Firefox, IE6, IE8, etc. As far as I know they're running Windows XP IE7, but when I run the same thing (IE7, WinXP) the site shows up fine on my computer. Only reason I can confirm there's a problem is that running Adobe's BrowserLab gives me the error "This program cannot display the webpage." Validating the page shows just some minor errors due to javascript and alt images. I'm stumped. Thanks in advance!

posted by gramcracker to computers & internet (8 comments total)

[heya please put the site link in your profile so people can click and look at it? thanks]
posted by jessamyn at 2:34 PM on September 23

IE 7 here (my wife's office) "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"
Weird.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:04 PM on September 23

I was stumped, so I did a bit of googling, and found this:

- Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced
- Scroll down to HTTP 1.1 settings
- uncheck Use HTTP 1.1

Restart IE and the page should load. Not sure how that will effect other sites though.

That said, there's no way of telling potential visitors that, so you might want to take what you've learned from that and diagnose the actual problem so it works without unchecking that item. Seems like it'd be more of a host issue then actual content, but I'm not sure. Maybe disable your javascript one item at a time and see if that does anything?
posted by backwards guitar at 3:33 PM on September 23 [1 favorite]

Oh, and this is where I got the notion to uncheck that item:

support.microsoft.com gives error...

If you read that thread there's a server side solution you might be able to implement.
posted by backwards guitar at 3:35 PM on September 23

Rip out all the javascript, clear your cache and see if it loads. IE7 can be nasty with javascript errors. although it's odd ie6 isn't shitting the bed as well.
posted by zentrification at 3:40 PM on September 23

Thanks, AskMefi. No idea what it was or why it started happening all of a sudden, but disabled all my wordpress plugins and got it back working again (AFAIK). Must've been some cache or gzip-ing issue.
posted by gramcracker at 4:53 PM on September 23

Oops, see my profile for the site. Forgot about the rel="nofollow" bit and self-linking, sorry.
posted by gramcracker at 5:09 PM on September 23

This can happen when a script on a page attempts to modify the DOM before the DOM has completed loading.
posted by axismundi at 5:32 PM on September 23