Netscape losing cursor

[Peter C. Gorman]

Paul H. Gray writes:

>Ever since upgrading from Netscape 2.x to the current version we have had
>increasing episodes of the cursor disappear and /or the station locking up.
>The only solution has been to bail out of Windows and go back in - or
>seometimes even reboot the machine.
>This is happening on everything from shop built 486/66's to Dell Pentium
>133's.  I am running Windows 3.x on the clients on a Netware 3.12 LAN -
>Running both IP and IPX using Novell's CLient 32.
>
>Has anyone else had similar problems? Did you solve them?

We have had similar problems. In almost every case, it's been a case of
Netscape or IE going to war with a video driver over how to handle a
particular image. Our best documented case is that the video driver for
Dell 425s/l (486) machines crashes on any page containing transparent
single-pixel GIFs (used for positional kludges on web pages). We have also,
though, run into specific GIFs and JPEGs that always (but inexplicably)
kill certain video drivers. I have inadvertently created such images myself
in PhotoShop, and re-creating the image file always solves it. We have
ruled out transmission or other errors.

Changing video drivers for a given machine usually only means that a
different set of images will kill it. I realize that this is more
empathetic rambling than a solution, but I hope it sheds some light on
where to look for a fix. It's worth noting that the only machines we
haven't seen crash on web pages are Macintoshes.

PG
_______________________________
Peter C. Gorman
University of Wisconsin
General Library System
Automation Services
pcgorman at facstaff.wisc.edu
(608) 265-5291