UPDATE: 3/11 see the experiment I’m trying above.
In the last couple of days, I’ve gotten several notes from people complaining they have trouble reading WUWT. See sample provided by a reader at left. It seems to make some posts go all caps and small washed out font.
I have no control over this as I’m hosted on the free wordpress.com web service and they constantly upgrade their platform with the latest updates. I suspect some recent upgrade has created a browser incompatibility with older browsers.
Again, I have no control over this, but I do have suggestions.
I’ve traced the problem I believe, so let me offer what I think is a solution. If you are one of those folks that refuses to upgrade from ancient browsers like IE6 and run on 512MB of memory on XP service pack 1, then there’s nothing I can do to help you.
The problem seems centric to IE8 and Windows XP systems, though does seem to show up slightly on IE8 with Windows 7.
I run Firefox, latest version, and never see any of the issues described. I also run Chrome, latest version with no trouble. May I suggest readers having problems try these?
The latest version of Java might also help, as would be upgrades to latest service packs and patches, etc. if you have not done so. Older machines running Windows XP would also benefit from browser upgrades, and would run better especially if you can increase RAM memory. What typically happens in large posts with a lot of comments is that the user can’t load it all due to memory limitations. I’ve found that 2GB RAM in Windows XP is the sweet spot. Memory is cheap these days, and is your best bank for buck performance upgrade.
While it would be nice if I had complete control over all the web elements and server side things, it would mean I’d have even less time for myself since I’d have to manage my own server, and then I’d be having posts on BOTS and HTAcess like Lucia has been doing lately. The trade off given the traffic volume that WUWT handles is more than worth a few upgrade glitches than can be solved by keeping up with the latest browsers and OS patches. This is why we moved Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit off a private server to wordpress.com, because keeping CA up and running on high traffic was difficult.
Of course if somebody has solved the problem themselves by some other means I have not thought of, please advise.
Thanks for your consideration – Anthony
Opera 11.60 on Debian Linux; no problems.
have had same problem on both work and home pc’s – one on W7 and one on XP – both on IE8, so I’m guessing it’s a IE8 issue? will have to check my laptops too.
It started a few days ago (a week I think), but seemed intermittent!
“ancient browsers like IE6” ???
What are they doing??
Logging into AOL???
21st century people
just pasting this as an experiment (comments box is in Times New Roman) but rest of comments are in small caps! (thats the symptom I’m having anyway)
I agree with this post (copy and pasted below) so will be interesting to see if anyone sees a different font between the two parts?…
matthu says:
March 10, 2012 at 2:16 pm
I am using Windows 7, IE8 and 4 Gb of RAM and although the main article on this page looks normal, as soon as the comments appear they are all in very small, light grey block capitals. As is almost all the text in all subsequent articles. Almost unreadable.
(note – as I’ve pasted – its reformatted to Times New Roman – so I guess not!)
Windows XP service pak 2, with up grades, 2 Mb memory and latest Firefox.
no problems, font and load are fine and have been stable.
Why upgrade Windows ? Pay Msoft money to get newer and then have to help them debug their ‘latest and greatest’ ?? You must be joking, right ? !
W7, lots of RAM, IE 9.0.8112
Problems from today – tiny caps, almost unreadable.
What were there thinking??
The posts above in this thread are ‘normal’ but not so some of the threads below on the main page, the one on the Guardian for example.
Vista*, IE9, 1Gb. No problems.
*I know, I know. Windows 7 was not available and XP came at extra cost. Never had any of the Vista problems.
No issues here with this Lenovo touch-tablet running 7, or the transformer, or any of my XP or other 7 machines with FF. I was having some issues the last few days with Ads auto popping on my Bionic however. Keep up the good work Anthony and let me know if you need any investors 🙂
Or Ubuntu with Chromium or Firefox or Opera for free. Free is a good price.
6 year old machine running on XP and latest iteration of Firefox, no problems here.
Opera browser here and have not be problems to report.
I am normally using FireFox and have no issues reading WUWT under Windows XP or Linux Kubuntu 11.10 (posting this from Kubuntu). I also have the old IE6 on Windows XP and now I can see the WUWT fonts look weird in that old browser. The XP machine has 2GB RAM.
Get FireFox would be my advice. With FireFox and Xmarks, bookmark synchronisation it is fully automatic even for browsers running different OS’es. I dropped IE years ago and have no regrets.
strange – just been to Josh’s wind cartoon thread – all comments in small caps again – then came back to this thread and all is normal again! bloomin annoying!
IT’S FIXED. I was having a problem, but not any more. I have done nothing.
The problem was happening in Climate Audit as well – but only if you expanded the comments to the very top story, not any of the others. But (for me at least) that problem has been fixed as well.
Everything for me is back to normal.
And now it is broken again … as soon as I submitted that last comment! Funnily, it is broken on Climate Audit as well as here on WUWT.
Somebody is playing silly buggers in the background!
The only slight difference between my comment which appears to have broken it again is that my comment went into moderation. The preceding comments I made did not go into moderation. I am not saying that is relevant, but it may be.
And now it is fixed again, straight after that last comment was submitted. Very odd.
I just tried this post side by side in FireFox 10.0.2 and IE6.0 on the same XP SP3 machine. The blog comments was originally readable in IE6, but a reload of the page made the fonts in the comments small and unreadable. Cntrl+ does not work to fix the issue in IE6.
The problem comes and goes in IE. Drop IE and move to FireFox if you have the font issue.
I used to have a 512MB laptop running XP. It got so slow I was about to try percussive therapy with a jack hammer. Then, in desperation, I tried a free Linux CD and have never, ever, looked back. Linux is Fast. Linux is Free (both as in price, and as in Liberty). Try downloading this http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1937 as a “live” CD – you can try first without installing. You. Will. Not. Regret. It.
I use XP and simply switching from IE8 to a newly downloaded Firefox browser has fixed it for me; thank God – and Mozilla.
Mostly it is not adhering to the general scheme of things set by the web “designer”. Rightly noted it is when not running the latest software (which current designs are tested against) or private styles and what.
For instance running an old system withouth proper fonts renders as funny as a updated system with proper fonts removed or an updated system with your own mismanaged compiled style sheet enabled.
So, it need not always, if ever, be a server side problem. :p
XP with Opera browser. No Problems.
XP, Firefox, and Java turned off, no problems.
IE8 Windows XP SP3 4GB ram with all up to date drivers. Problem started two days ago and now seems to be fixed. Posts are legible again.