Blogspot blogs won't display on one computer only
February 2, 2009 1:50 PM Subscribe
Weird glitch in Internet Explorer: certain blogspot blogs won't display on one computer only (post wifi browsing session?)
Asking for someone I know. They were on free wireless at a (supposedly secure, free corporate type) wifi hotspot and browsed their own blogs and several others they regularly visit. Later they discovered that they cannot view these blogs on their laptop any more: Internet Explorer appears to open the pages, but they are totally blank. Here's the extra weirdness:
1. There is NOTHING to view on the pages as they come up. You can't highlight anything, there are not objects. BUT if you look at the source it just looks like a normal blogspot blog page setup. Again, view source brings up just what you'd expect (well, I haven't gone over it line for line but it certainly looks right, having looked at more than a couple of blogspot pages in source) - yet what you see in the browser window is nada, just a blank black page!
2. On other computers these blogs come up fine so it is the computer, not the blogs themselves.
3. One of their own blogs is affected - but they can still log in to their account, make posts etc. The posts show up fine.
Complications:
1. This showed up after they did the wireless browsing and they are convinced the free wifi "did this" to their computer but I just don't get how that would be. They think only the blogs they browsed there were affected but under questioning couldn't be totally sure about that.
2. An alternate browser is not an option, they cannot install outside software on their computer.
3. Did the standard clearing of cache, cookies, history, offline web content, restart. No change. I haven't personally used IE for a long long time but I can't think of anything else basic to do about it.
Any bright ideas? I'm completely flummoxed.
Asking for someone I know. They were on free wireless at a (supposedly secure, free corporate type) wifi hotspot and browsed their own blogs and several others they regularly visit. Later they discovered that they cannot view these blogs on their laptop any more: Internet Explorer appears to open the pages, but they are totally blank. Here's the extra weirdness:
1. There is NOTHING to view on the pages as they come up. You can't highlight anything, there are not objects. BUT if you look at the source it just looks like a normal blogspot blog page setup. Again, view source brings up just what you'd expect (well, I haven't gone over it line for line but it certainly looks right, having looked at more than a couple of blogspot pages in source) - yet what you see in the browser window is nada, just a blank black page!
2. On other computers these blogs come up fine so it is the computer, not the blogs themselves.
3. One of their own blogs is affected - but they can still log in to their account, make posts etc. The posts show up fine.
Complications:
1. This showed up after they did the wireless browsing and they are convinced the free wifi "did this" to their computer but I just don't get how that would be. They think only the blogs they browsed there were affected but under questioning couldn't be totally sure about that.
2. An alternate browser is not an option, they cannot install outside software on their computer.
3. Did the standard clearing of cache, cookies, history, offline web content, restart. No change. I haven't personally used IE for a long long time but I can't think of anything else basic to do about it.
Any bright ideas? I'm completely flummoxed.
Oh, by "they cannot install outside software on their computer" I realize now that you might have just meant that they were told not to do so. In that case, #2 doesn't apply.
posted by helios at 2:22 PM on February 2, 2009
posted by helios at 2:22 PM on February 2, 2009
Perhaps the website is intentionally blocking out IE because they are trying to encourage you to upgrade to a decent browser like Firefox.
Whether or not that is likely for that particular website, I bet the sites will render correctly in Firefox.
posted by brenton at 2:43 PM on February 2, 2009
Whether or not that is likely for that particular website, I bet the sites will render correctly in Firefox.
posted by brenton at 2:43 PM on February 2, 2009
Response by poster: Clarifications - external software is not electronically restricted, it is just against policy (it is a corporate laptop, though the individual is allowed to use if for personal computing outside of work hours) - installing Firefox on it is not an option, period, I'm well aware it would likely solve the problem. If they can't resolve it they're just not going to view these sites on their laptop any more. They do not want to address it with work IT, although they are not violating company policy with their at home browsing the content of the blogs is such that they don't want to discuss them with work.
Definitely not a proxy issue, I checked that. They are not browsing these sites at work on work internet, they are browsing it at home on their home wireless connection where previously it worked fine. The laptop hasn't been handled by work IT in the interim so it seems like it has to be
It doesn't seem to be a security settings issue but I'm not sure I checked everything I needed to. Part of the problem is that the individual is not very tech-savvy - I'm better, but I haven't worked on a non-Apple computer in over 4 years so my memory of their peculiarities is not so great. I guess I'll keep mulling over these. However they can still see some blogs of similar content (i.e. Blogger displays a click-through) content warning when you visit them
They claim they made no changes to their settings, their blog etc. in the interim. It is not a general IE issue, I've gone around to various blogs that aren't displaying correctly and nobody is complaining in the comments on current posts about not being able to see them.
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll keep reading. I won't have access to the computer for a few days though. I will follow up if it gets resolved.
posted by nanojath at 3:18 PM on February 2, 2009
Definitely not a proxy issue, I checked that. They are not browsing these sites at work on work internet, they are browsing it at home on their home wireless connection where previously it worked fine. The laptop hasn't been handled by work IT in the interim so it seems like it has to be
It doesn't seem to be a security settings issue but I'm not sure I checked everything I needed to. Part of the problem is that the individual is not very tech-savvy - I'm better, but I haven't worked on a non-Apple computer in over 4 years so my memory of their peculiarities is not so great. I guess I'll keep mulling over these. However they can still see some blogs of similar content (i.e. Blogger displays a click-through) content warning when you visit them
They claim they made no changes to their settings, their blog etc. in the interim. It is not a general IE issue, I've gone around to various blogs that aren't displaying correctly and nobody is complaining in the comments on current posts about not being able to see them.
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll keep reading. I won't have access to the computer for a few days though. I will follow up if it gets resolved.
posted by nanojath at 3:18 PM on February 2, 2009
Response by poster: Resolved, but not by any apparent rational agency. It just sorted itself out, due to some browser update or ? Who knows.
posted by nanojath at 12:27 PM on March 5, 2009
posted by nanojath at 12:27 PM on March 5, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
1) Is there plenty of free disk space on the laptop?
2) Many corporate laptops have a policy which forces web browsing to go through a company proxy server, and the network administrator of your friend's workplace might have seen people accessing these sites and blocked them. Can you check the proxy settings in IE and see if network policy prevents changing it?
3) Can you visit other blogspot blogs?
4) What's the security setting of IE on this machine? Can you set the security to be the same on your other computer to verify it's not security-related?
5) It's possible some JS include on the blogspot blog is causing problems. Are all the problematic blogs using some sort of counter, external comments, ads, or other Javascript includes? If so, does removing them fix the problem?
posted by helios at 2:20 PM on February 2, 2009