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url names - problem unique to OS/2 or me?

Started by Dave Palmer, 2009.09.16, 06:02:59

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Dave Palmer

Gosh - I hope the solar sunspot cycle returns to normal soon, and then maybe my systems would work.

My most recent issue deals with retrieving something as simple as:  www.alderhouse.org/index.html

Right now my system fails to retrieve that page or any page with a similar name length.

If I rename the index.html to, say, a.html it will work

If I rename it to something other than 4, 5 or 6 characters in length, it will work.

If it is left at 4, 5 or 6 characters - it will not work. 

The value of the name does not matter - only the length.

What is wrong?  Surely I can't be the only one to which this has happened.  Or am I?

By the way this is on a different ISP - nothing to do with the one which was the subject of my earlier problem.

Running Warp, 4.5 - very inactive system - no maintenance since I upgraded to  VOICE PMmail 3.00.00.0981 (10968),    Apr  7 2008

Suggestions. laughter and criticism all welcome and appreciated.
Dave

Saijin_Naib

You sir, have won my Entomologist award for finding bugs.

Wish I had something more helpful to offer up other than that.

What browser?

warpcafe

Hey,

Saijin_Naib asked the right initial question: Which browser?
The next question (from me) is:
- Does that only happen when the URL is entered on the address bar input, or also when hyperlinked ?
  (e.g. clicking on a "href"...)

Cheers,
Thomas
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.
By definition, there are already enough people to do that"
- G.H. Hardy

chennecke

Maybe that's the punishment for that site using Flash to create mouse-over effects.  :o

I don't see the problem here, so I'll join the choir that wants to know more about your setup.

Dave Palmer

Ahhhg - this one was on me ???

Thanks for the questions and comments.  They led me to do what I should have done in the first place.

I'd assumed the file (index.html) was valid.  It appears it is not - and I've no idea what is wrong with it.

To prove this I built a very simple web page and loaded copies 1, 22, thru 7777777.html
I retrieved those pages with:
<html>
<br><a href="http://www.alderhouse.org/1.html"> 1 character</a>
<br><a href="http://www.alderhouse.org/22.html"> 2 character</a>
<br><a href="http://www.alderhouse.org/333.html"> 3 character</a>
<br><a href="http://www.alderhouse.org/4444.html"> 4 character</a>
<br><a href="http://www.alderhouse.org/55555.html"> 5 character</a>
<br><a href="http://www.alderhouse.org/666666.html"> 6 character</a>
<br><a href="http://www.alderhouse.org/7777777.html"> 7 character</a>
<br><a href="http://www.alderhouse.org/index.html">index page</a>
</html>

Everyone of the 1 - 7's  can be retrieved, whereas  index.html could not be.
The same results are obtained when the url is typed in the address bar.

The website was  built by a website generator, so I trusted that the output would be valid.  It appears that it is not and I've got to find out why. 

There are two  confusing point in all this:
1  others - like you - could easily retrieve the page in question - so is there an add-on or add-in for Firefox that makes all this work?
2 for 12 months - or more - this site has worked -

I'll  find a older version of Firefox and see if I can get around this.

Sorry I didn't dig further the first time.
Dave

ivan

One question - you do have the flash plugin installed?  Though how that would stop you from accessing the site if you didn't is beyond me.

I have had a brief liik at the code but nothing jumps out at me as being very wrong but I'll have a better look when I have have time.

chennecke

Well, could be that the file simply was not transferred correctly. The link "Alderhouse Info" returns a page not found error here.

As for generators creating valid content, I can tell you from my experience as a web designer that those things are a pretty good way to ensure that the code is not valid.

BTW, the files seem to contain an extra file ending character. The standard OS/2 e.exe is known to add this but you don't want it in HTML pages. Also, you really should consider replacing the Flash navigation with a CSS-based one. With the Flash navigation you lock out many people who do not use Flash, e.g., because they are vision impaired and use special browsers. Search machines are not able to find the linked pages, too.

warpcafe

Hi,

well, from a first sight.. phew... that's pretty much messed-up I'd say.
I don't mean "wrong", but only a strange mix of CSS, outdated tags, loads of spaces which are actually useless... I don't know who made that PhotonFX but I guess it's not quite top-notch, state-of-the-art website design.
Hopefully that wasn't you I'm blaming?  :-[

Okay, one thing that really makes me shiver is that strange character at the very end of the page (because it's outside the <html> tag). The W3C HTML validator says (amongst other things) that the page is missing a "doctype" and that there is a typo:
<td  aline="justify">
should be
<td  align="justify">

The CSS is actually looking pretty OK... I wonder why it wasn't used to a suffcient extent then.
Regarding speed: I bet that 90% of the problems (sloooow page redering) will be gone once that flash stuff is subsituted by... well, whatever. Did you notice what bloat is in these flash links?

HTH, Cheers,
Thomas
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.
By definition, there are already enough people to do that"
- G.H. Hardy

DougB

Other possibilities:
Do you have something in your \MPTN\ETC\HOSTS file that might affect it?
Do you have a firewall that may have something that might affect it?
Do you have something like FLASHBLOCK installed, that might affect it?

FWIW, I can access the mentioned page, with no apparent trouble (I didn't try the FLASH stuff). I do have FLASHBLOCK installed, and I do not have the FLASH player installed. I do use GNASH with MediaConnectivity to play.FLASH, sometimes. I am currently using Firefox 3.5.3.

You can validate any HTML by using the facility at:
http://validator.w3.org/

It is not unusual to find many errors in generated HTML, especially if it is created by some Microsoft tool. I find that HTML generated by either NVU or KOMPOSER is usually good.

Dave Palmer

#9
Everyone, thanks for the feedback. 

PhotonFx is a package I picked up which does a fairly easy job of web page creation and maintenance at the end user level.

I've 5 sites which I volunteered to setup and did so  over the years in a roll-your-own way.  It was fast and easy for me, but no one could pick it up.  I need to move these sites to the owners.

This package allowed me to keep a lot of design appearances and someday soon these organizations will pick up their own maintenance.

Having said that - I'll look at the end of file characters and the aline vs align problem.

The flash stuff is in there for some options that are offered on link design.  As I recall they used shading of the buttons as the mouse goes over - or something like that - I didn't implement that but the package still creates the code - which, as you noticed, is not appropriate.

Yes there is one page missing - alderhouseinfo  and I need to fix that - but that site is really dormant and that's why I am playing with it now.

I'm using FireFox 2.0.0.13, and I do have AdBlockPlus - don't know if either could be the problem.  Usually adblock tells me when something is blocked.

The only firewall I have is the dsl modem and I took the default back in 2007 and haven't touched it since. 
I do have a hosts file sitting there since June of 2008 - I'l rename it, reboot and test some more-
Thanks again,
Dave
p.s. really appreciate the feedback - keep it up, I buried my pride of authorship a long time ago - it just didn't pay off - ever



pps:  Just rebooted, without the hosts file and have the same problems.  One thing I failed mentioned, often, when I clear the firefox  cache the page will be retrieved.
If I don't clear the cache, then the screen status simply says 'done', nothing is displayed, and View>PageSource retrieves nothing.

What is irritating as the devil - everything works with Firefox under XP - on the same system (swappable drives) via the same modem, etc.  It also works on my wife's XP system... arggggh!


The Blue Warper

#10
Hi, Dave!
I don't know if this can be of any help to you, but I have the same problems as you trying accessing the URL you submitted.
This was with FF 3.5.3 under WinXP (couldn't try with OS/2 yet).  Here is a short report:
1) I was able to access all your seven test pages but index.html.
2) If I click on the URL which points to index.html, FF seems to act for an instant (say 1-2 seconds), and then it stops loading the page with the following error:
Content Encoding Error
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.
   *   Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

3) I tried disabling the extensions (by running FF in "safe-mode"), but I got the same result.
4) This happens with both clicking on an URL and typing in it into the address bar and then pressing Enter.
5) If I load this URL:
http://www.alderhouse.org/
then FF loads the home page, but if I then click on the "Index" link, I get the same result as n. 2) [see above].
6) Internet Explorer (v7) has no problem in loading the URL http://www.alderhouse.org/index.html.
7) This isn't the first time I experience that.  I happened indeed to browse a site where I found certain pages that couldn't be rendered by Firefox (same error as with 'your' URL). I then tried MS IE, and it did render them.
8 ) So it looks like an HTML-related issue, as far as I understand (as previously suggested by others here).

I'll try to verify with OS/2 ASAP, but I can't right now.  Hope this report may help you to trace back the cause of this weird issue...

Saijin_Naib

XP SP3
Firefox 3.5.3

Page works fine, even the index.html.

RobertM

Trying www.alderhouse.org/index.html under Firefox 3.0.9 under OS/2 works fine. (works fine on Windows with FF3.5.3 as well)

I also used wGet on OS/2 to retrieve the file and it worked fine. wGet reports the file as being sent as text/html and there seems nothing wrong with the file itself.

I am beginning to suspect it is some sort of server error on their side. Perhaps a script that generates the pages that is having problems at certain times.

Best,
Rob


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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The Blue Warper

As a possible confirmation of what Robert said above, I can tell that I tried five minutes ago the "index.html" URL and it didn't work.  I tried again a moment ago and it did load the page...

Dave Palmer

Gosh, I'm in debt to all the work you guys are doing and have done.

I feel somewhat better, now that a couple of you have encountered a similar issue.

Since it seems to be something on the server end, how the hector do I  pursue it with the ISP?

As a end user I just don't have the tools to document the inconsistent output that the site provides.

Plus, and this has happened before, everytime I mention OS/2, the discussion ends and I find it hard to overcome the fingerpointing that goes on.

Tell me if you can - what is it about index.html that stops it from working - but 1.html, 2.html etc. don't seem to thave the same trouble. 

There's a temptation to just switch over to XP - but I don't want to....
Dave