[Web4lib] IE 7 - IE 8 problem

[Robin Boulton]

Hi folks, 
 
Once again I’m hoping the collective brain can come to my rescue with a web site problem we are having.
 
Our web site has started “flashing” – pages will attempt to load and then drop, load and drop, sometimes 14-15 times – and sometimes will get into an endless loop of this action, so that you have to stop the browser from trying to load. We were thinking that it had to do with the IE 7 compatibility patch Microsoft issued, but there are inconsistencies – our webmaster, for instance, gets no flashing on any of her computers at home (and she has several, of different vintages and amounts of memory, and different browser versions). The problem is not only in the library though, because quite a few patrons have called to let us know they too are having the problem. Sometimes on two theoretically identical PCs, side by side, a page will load cleanly on one and not well, or not at all, one the other.
 
There is currently code in the site that tries to force IE 8 into IE 7 compatibility mode, but on our public machines – which are still on IE 7 – the problem is much worse, and happens much sooner within a given session, than it is on staff machines running IE 8.
 
We recently changed from Trillian to LibraryH3lp for our AskALibrarian service, and initially that seemed to be the cause of the problem, but when the webmaster disabled it the problem didn’t go away, or even moderate.
 
Any suggestions would be welcomed as we are now growing bored with bashing our own heads, and the brick wall has chips missing.
 
TIA for any help!
 
Robin 
 
 
Robin Boulton  
IT Manager
St. Charles Public Library District
St. Charles, IL 60174
(630) 584 0076 x 258  
Cell:(630) 918 8738 
http://www.stcharleslibrary.org/
robin at stcharleslibrary.org