URL info in IE vs Netscape

[Brian Westra]

As long as the discussion is rolling along about IE vs Netscape, I thought
I'd ask the experts what in IE causes a problem I had with several
ColdFusion templates. I've corrected the problem, so this is more just out
of curiousity.

I set up the ColdFusion templates in such a way as to generate a user ID,
and other info, and to call up a browsable list of titles, based on the
letter someone clicks. This information is all passed to the Web
server via the URL. I also included a #top reference, to insure that the
browser would display the top of the page (I later discovered this wasn't
needed, and is the cause of the problem).

Thus, the URL would have looked like this (simplified example):
http://www.lib.montana.edu/journals/results.cfm#top?lett=r&u=4F53497A

Using Netscape as a browser, this link causes the template to do
a query of the database for all titles beginning with "r", and displays
that subset. 

Using IE (4.x and 5), this link causes a query and display of _all_
titles, not just those beginning with "r".

I corrected the problem by removing the "#top" part of the URL--it was my
mistake to include that in the first place. I'm just curious what might be
going on between IE and the server to cause the template to incorrectly
interpret the "lett=r" pair. Is IE doing something with the URL?

thanks for any help you can provide,

Brian Westra
Assistant Professor/Reference Librarian            westra at montana.edu
Montana State University Libraries                 (406)994-5298
P.O. Box 173320
Bozeman, MT 59717-3320