[WEB4LIB] MSIE5.0 and CGI scripts timing out - URL

Thu Apr 15 11:50:33 EDT 1999

> Some people asked for a URL to see for themselves. Here's one:
>
> http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=find+author
> +drell+and+date+1998&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=

I don't think IE5 is timing out, it's just not capable of displaying the
invalid HTML returned by the CGI script.  Here's the first bit of the results
I got back (using Netscape):

   <HTML>
   <HEAD>
   <pre>
   <title>FIND AUTHOR DRELL (HEP-SPIRES-SLAC)</title>
   </HEAD>
   <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
   </pre>
   <b>Only the latest 25 documents satisfying your search criteria could be
   displayed. To see all records, use the REMAINING DOCUMENTS pointer at the
   bottom of the display. Alternatively, break your search into several
pieces.
   Use, for example, the DATE qualifier:

The use of PRE here is grossly invalid -- wrong placement (it can't appear in
the HEAD element) plus it 'overlaps' a tag for an element (BODY) that is not
completely contained inside it -- and IE5 is much more strict about handling
invalid HTML.  I think if you clean up the HTML returned by the script
everything will work OK.

- Darryl

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   Darryl Friesen, B.Sc., Programmer/Analyst    Darryl.Friesen at usask.ca
   Consulting & Development                     http://gollum.usask.ca/
   Department of Computing Services                 163 Murray Building
   University of Saskatchewan                              Main Library
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  "The Truth Is Out There"