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
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@ur momisugly Anthony
Now that the Google Advertisements are turned off, I no longer experience any problems with IE9 or IE10 with Compatibility View either turned off or on.
The INTEL version of Windows 8 has two IE10 versions installed as standard. One IE10 is for the new METRO interface (plug-ins not allowed), and one for the traditional Desktop. Both experienced problems, and both could be resolved with the Compatibility View button.
IE9 on Windows 7 also experiences no problems now, but could also “work around” the problem previously by using Compatibility View.
I have no problems in reading this blog.
Asus EEE PC 10″ mini laptop with Firefox 10 on Ubuntu 10.04 is fast and OK. Its successor might be Asus Transformer – a tablet with a keyboard.
Nokia N9 with its original browser on Linux Meego is fast and OK. Font could be smaller so that I can see more text at a time.
When I want to get better picture of 500 replies, I use a desktop PC with multiple monitors e.g. full HD 24″. Firefox on Linux there too. I am considering larger monitors with higher resolution and turned 90 degrees to read like a book.
With Ads on again, the problem, for me, is back again 🙂
IE8
wayne says:
March 11, 2012 at 4:37 am
Anthony… looking through WordPress’s CSSs used in your pages and there is a loose “;” that Visual Studio says is an illegal character even in CSS 2.1 verifier. May not be the problem… but it might. Would depend on how long that glitch has been there. See:
“s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/post-flair/style.css?m=1331331746g&ver=3″ file at the second occurance of the CSS entry “#wpl-mustlogin a”. The loose semicolon is just before this entry. There are some others but most I see should just be ignored but the browsers if they don’t recognize the attributes (most are on shadowed text and such).
==================================================================
I dusted off IE 6.0 today and had a quick look with that. It came up with a script error (javascript?)
” An error has occurred in a script on this page!
Line: 2
Char: 1
Error: Object expected.
Code: 0
Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?”
I haven’t time to verify it or look further into it at the moment but if someone else can …?
@ur momisugly Anthony
Google Advertisements are back, and so is text problem.
However, Compatibility View is a “workaround” for IE.
Ya wanna play ?
On Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9 the font problem occurs after some advertisements. After re-reading the page (F5) often disappears. It never occurs ot the same machine and Google Chrome. I would suspect different interpretation of Javasctipt code.
Aruond 14 hours ago things were ok; now the intermittent washout is back. I appreciate that you have enough on your plate, Mr Watts, so thanks for trying to sort this.
I wonder how much of this is just mischief goo-goo-l is doing to undercut their competitor?