Why doesn't my website work properly?

January 14, 2004 6:14 AM

I've been having a weird problem with my website: eoe.is. It seems that when some users enter my website, some of the images don't appear, and when they click on a link on my site, the images on the linked site don't show either. People have to turn off their browser to make images appear again. I've only heard of cases with IE, WinXP. Any suggestions?
posted by einarorn to computers & internet (16 answers total)

no problem with firebird macosX - sounds like a css bug?
posted by dabitch at 6:20 AM on January 14, 2004

Were the images made with Photoshop? Windows versions of IE may be choking on the metadata. Some background and workarounds. (Caveat: Unlike the serious Photoshop jocks hanging out here, I know nothing about the program itself -- I just remember reading about it.)
posted by mcwetboy at 6:53 AM on January 14, 2004

Yep, the photos were created with Photoshop, and I used the "Save for Web" function. Most of the images were then uploaded with Movabletype/ImageMagick.

I've read through the article that mcewtboy posted (thanks). However, the article doesn't really suggest a solution, other than re-making all the images, I guess. Does anyone have an easier solution and/or a way to find which images are causing the problem?
posted by einarorn at 7:06 AM on January 14, 2004

it does offer a solution: use jpegtran to process your images. you don't have to remake them, just run the existing images through that program.
posted by andrew cooke at 7:23 AM on January 14, 2004

nothing to do with the images and everything to do with the browser.

i've had this comment with some frequency with visitors to the mirror project and it's always ie, xp. (and for some strange reason bubbled up in the last couple of weeks).

the solution appears that people need to make sure that their running the latest service pack. this has resolved the situation 100% of the time.
posted by heather at 7:29 AM on January 14, 2004

maybe running isn't the right term. update to?
posted by heather at 7:29 AM on January 14, 2004

Ok, I didn't read the small print at the bottom :-) However, that seems to be a Linux command line tool thingy, which I don't know anything about. Isn't there a less scary solution (btw, I'm running my website on a Windows IIS server)?

I'd even be willing to run all the images through Photoshop again, if that would get rid of the problem!

On preview: Heather, is there a specific update that I can point people to, or do they just have to update everything? Also, this solution is a bit difficult because some people who report the problems are viewing my site on a public computer (library, college, etc).
posted by einarorn at 7:34 AM on January 14, 2004

You might want to check if some images are linked as relative and some are absolute path. IE used to not like a combination of that.

ie if you have some images linked as http://example.com/images/foo.jpg and and other as ../images/bar.gif it would not display one sort of link.

However that was the case about a year or so ago, if I remember correctly at Davezilla. You might want to search his archive.
posted by sebas at 7:39 AM on January 14, 2004

einarorn, i don't know of a specific update. windows update should identify what's needed. i've seen the service packs broken down into system stuff and browser stuff before). if i can successfully make it through an update, anyone should be able to.

re public computers... that's an interesting point. i'm not sure of a solution. perhaps we can ping jessamyn and get a sense of what happens at her library regarding support.
posted by heather at 8:48 AM on January 14, 2004

I'd even be willing to run all the images through Photoshop again, if that would get rid of the problem!

well it would - use "save for web". as it says (again) in the article linked to by mcwetboy.
posted by andrew cooke at 11:06 AM on January 14, 2004

I had a similar problem on a site at work recently. The old lady in customer service reported that some people were "missing images" and were unable to click on links. They were all using IE on XP. After much experimenting and gnashing of teeth, it turned out the culprit was Norton Internet Security. It's got some ad blocking component that's on by default, and if the URL of a link on your page has any string that matches on in its database, it just simply removes the offending image and link. This was a huge problem as the site itself was designed for people who purchase our product to enter competitions and redeem promotions. Kinda hard to have a "Promotions" site that doesn't use the word "promotions", isn't it? At my boss's request, we ended up having to comb the site and change every directory and file with the word in it to "data" instead. Stupid, but now it works. Might be worth checking out.
posted by web-goddess at 4:06 PM on January 14, 2004

Yep, the photos were created with Photoshop, and I used the "Save for Web" function.

It's not the images then: I've used that a zillion times in the past 4 years and never had an image not display. I think web-goddess is onto the likely culprit. Is it possible Norton (or something else) blocks images from the .is domain by default?
posted by yerfatma at 4:13 PM on January 14, 2004

ah. sorry. didn't see that. :o)
posted by andrew cooke at 4:17 PM on January 14, 2004

Hmm, FWIW, I'm running Win2000 and Norton Internet Security 2003, and have no problems viewing in IE. Perhaps NIS2004 is more aggressive, or there's really something unique to WinXP?
posted by pmurray63 at 10:11 PM on January 14, 2004

Everything displays fine for me with Firebird 0.7/XP/McAfee, but hangs with 7 images to display on IE6/XP/McAfee. Maybe I am clutching at straws, but have you used any non "normal" English characters for filenames or something?
posted by dg at 11:17 PM on January 14, 2004

Just to close this.


The problem was solved by using the "Save for Web" funcion in Photoshop. I have a sidebar on my webpage, where I have a couple of photos. Some of those photos I took with my cell phone, so they were low-res. Therefore I just saved them the normal way (without thinking about it) in Photoshop.

I just solved the problem by saving those images again with the "Save for Web" function. My problem had nothing to do with non-English characters, the .is domain or anything else.

Thanks everybody for your help :-)
posted by einarorn at 1:13 PM on January 19, 2004