Internet Explorer hangs when mod_rewrite is on

I did several searches in the forum, but didn’t find anything on this issue. That’s probably because this doesn’t occur on most IE releases.

When mod_rewrite is turned on and friend urls are enabled, my version of IE (6.0.2900.2180.xpsp.sp2_gdr.050301-1519 - that’s it’s nickname, at least ) does not go from one page to another properly. When you click a link, IE just sits there indefinitely. Not only so, but you can’t click on anything else; the page is just frozen. If you refresh the page, rather than actually refreshing that page, it shows the page that you had clicked on.

I thought that there was just something wrong with my IE for awhile, because I couldn’t get any other computer to do the same thing. I became a bit more wary, however, after I had completely reset my OS, and IE did the same thing afterward. I was finally convinced that this was not just my machine when one of my clients recently reported the same problem.

I actually didn’t realize that this was caused by mod_rewrite until today, when I started taking the issue seriously, trying to solve my client’s problem. When mod-rewrite is disabled, and friendly urls are turned off, everything works fine. I tried deleting those two lines at the top, but that unfortunately did nothing.

I’m out of ideas now. I’ve been developing on Etomite and MODx for quite some time now, and I want to continue to do so. I would be thankful for any help that you have to offer.

Could it be that IE is waiting for data from the web server? Maybe try FF because I think it gives a bit more information on what it is doing. If FF works fine with no delays then it must be IE in some way. But if the web server is delaying then maybe there is something wrong with the server configuration?

Andy

You wouldn’t happen to use the CSS as document method, would you ?
If so, try this fix : http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,4201.0.html

If you’re using normal CSS files, I don’t see what’s happening there

I have never heard of this problem either...

Quote from: ajayre at Sep 14, 2006, 01:29 PM

Could it be that IE is waiting for data from the web server? Maybe try FF because I think it gives a bit more information on what it is doing. If FF works fine with no delays then it must be IE in some way. But if the web server is delaying then maybe there is something wrong with the server configuration?

Andy

Hey, Andy. Thanks for the reply. Yes, I’m primarly a Firefox and Safari user; I only use IE for development purposes, to check the majority browser. Sorry I didn’t make that clear. This is definitely and IE only issue.

Quote from: davidm at Sep 15, 2006, 02:15 AM

You wouldn’t happen to use the CSS as document method, would you ?
If so, try this fix : http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,4201.0.html

If you’re using normal CSS files, I don’t see what’s happening there

I have never heard of this problem either...

No, my CSS files are just normal documents in a folder on the server.

Quote from: jlivingston at Sep 14, 2006, 01:23 PM

I tried deleting those two lines at the top, but that unfortunately did nothing.

I reread this today, and realized this might not be clear. I’m referring to the two lines and the top of the .htaccess file; I believe they refer to zlib compression.

Hmmm.. mod_rewrite simply hides the real URLs from the browser. The browser doesn’t know this is happening - it all works on the server.

What do your URLs look like? Can you give an example?

Do you have different CSS files for FF and IE?

Here is one of my sites that uses MODx and mod_rewrite. Can you access it ok?

http://www.topdogusa.org

Andy

Quote from: ajayre at Sep 15, 2006, 09:21 AM

Hmmm.. mod_rewrite simply hides the real URLs from the browser. The browser doesn’t know this is happening - it all works on the server.

What do your URLs look like? Can you give an example?

Do you have different CSS files for FF and IE?

Here is one of my sites that uses MODx and mod_rewrite. Can you access it ok?

http://www.topdogusa.org

Andy

My URLs typically look something like

http://www.mysite.com/Home.html

or perhaps

http://www.mysite.com/Services/Design.html

The CSS files are the same for both, but I do add one extra CSS file for IE using IE conditional comments. Shouldn’t be a problem though; the css rules are very basic, making minor margin, padding, and positioning adjustments for the rare discrepencies.

I tried accessing your site through my version of IE, and everything worked fine, which was encouraging. The main differences I see between mine and yours are that mine has capital letters in the URLs, and I’m using alias paths to simulate a folder structure, which I didn’t see on your site. I wonder if that might have something to do with it? Do you have a site that uses alias paths?

No I haven’t used the alias paths option with FURLs. So what happens if you temporarily stop using the IE specific CSS file? Or temporarily stop using alias paths?

Andy