IE 9 Becoming a Nightmare! May All its Developers Get Fired!

[jscheuer1]

The pages have not been updated

[bernie1227]

he probably tested it offline

[jscheuer1]

That doesn't help us in diagnosing the problem further.

Oh, and by the way, it does the same thing or similar in Chrome. So it's probably not preloading. I think the styles might be the wrong order, waiting for the body tag to establish the background image and color. No background color appears set for the HTML element, and there may be a container. There's something white flashing, that much is fairly sure.

[bernie1227]

I'm not getting that issue in chrome

[jscheuer1]

It's intermittent. But it is there if I switch between pages. Like Friends and Home and back again. 3 or 4 out of 5 times it flickers white first, either the whole page or a section of it.

[KennyP]

I entered the <!--[if lt IE 9]> code to every page of the site.

As for trying a preloader as opposed to the current type of image preloading I'm using, the only two I've located here on Dynamic Forums are "Preload Image (with progress bar) Script I and II. Unless you're aware of a better one I'll go ahead and try these.

Wait - Actually, I just realized all the images are being loaded by the welcome page during its display. So, when all the other pages display, all images are already loaded. Should it make a difference how they were loaded?

[KennyP]

OK, I now added Preload Image (with progress bar) Script II posted here on Dynamic Forums. Unfortunately not only doesn't it make a difference, but the images are not preloading as well or not at all. Could you guys please recommend one you know works?

It boggles the mind to see that all the MS developers can't release a better browser when it's been in development for more time than all the others. We shouldn't have to devise fixes for their shortcomings. It doesn't make sense and something is terribly wrong with that.

[jscheuer1]

Perhaps. But I would get the css in order first. In Chrome when switching back and forth between home and friends, it often goes white. That means that the images aren't being called in time and that the background color of #000000 is being parsed too late to prevent a white flash.

At the very beginning of css/style.css there's:

body {padding:0; margin:0; color:#000000}

It should perhaps be:

html, body {padding:0; margin:0; color:#ffffff; background-color: #000000 !important;}

The browser cache may need to be cleared and/or the pages refreshed to see changes.

About the preloading though, I don't see any active preloading. The images are there as background images and foreground images but there's no mechanism in place that I see that ensures these are loaded before the home or other pages are loaded.

You could do active preloading where you check to ensure the images are loaded before leaving the welcome page. But with so many images, that could take awhile. Let's try the css first. There could be other css tweaks as well.

[KennyP]

Thanks John. The following change you posted...

html, body {padding:0; margin:0; color:#ffffff; background-color: #000000 !important;}

in conjunction with the preload script on every page fixed the partial white sections and full white pages before page loads on most page loads; not all. However, the transitions are not yet smooth; the new settings and script changed the white before page load to black, which is an improvement.

I did add the preload script preloader.js to all pages (which is being called from the scripts folder). The images however don't seem to be loading well, especially the page's main image of Billy Joe; it doesn't seem to preload; rather, it loads after the rest of the page. Maybe a better preloading script might fix the entire issue and restore the smooth transitions as they were previously? Would you please recommend one?

By the way, I also cleared the browser cache and the css and script cache folder I have in the root on the server, which functions with this script to decrease site loading time...

<?php

	/************************************************************************
	 * CSS and Javascript Combinator 0.5
	 * Copyright 2006 by Niels Leenheer
	 *
	 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
	 * a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
	 * "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
	 * without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
	 * distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
	 * permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
	 * the following conditions:
	 * 
	 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
	 * included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
	 *
	 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
	 * EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
	 * MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
	 * NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE
	 * LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
	 * OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
	 * WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
	 */


	$cache 	  = true;
	$cachedir = dirname(__FILE__) . '/cache';
	$cssdir   = dirname(__FILE__) . '/css';
	$jsdir    = dirname(__FILE__) . '/scripts';

	// Determine the directory and type we should use
	switch ($_GET['type']) {
		case 'css':
			$base = realpath($cssdir);
			break;
		case 'javascript':
			$base = realpath($jsdir);
			break;
		default:
			header ("HTTP/1.0 503 Not Implemented");
			exit;
	};

	$type = $_GET['type'];
	$elements = explode(',', $_GET['files']);
	
	// Determine last modification date of the files
	$lastmodified = 0;
	while (list(,$element) = each($elements)) {
		$path = realpath($base . '/' . $element);
	
		if (($type == 'javascript' && substr($path, -3) != '.js') || 
			($type == 'css' && substr($path, -4) != '.css')) {
			header ("HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden");
			exit;	
		}
	
		if (substr($path, 0, strlen($base)) != $base || !file_exists($path)) {
			header ("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
			exit;
		}
		
		$lastmodified = max($lastmodified, filemtime($path));
	}
	
	// Send Etag hash
	$hash = $lastmodified . '-' . md5($_GET['files']);
	header ("Etag: \"" . $hash . "\"");
	
	if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH']) && 
		stripslashes($_SERVER['HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH']) == '"' . $hash . '"') 
	{
		// Return visit and no modifications, so do not send anything
		header ("HTTP/1.0 304 Not Modified");
		header ('Content-Length: 0');
	} 
	else 
	{
		// First time visit or files were modified
		if ($cache) 
		{
			// Determine supported compression method
			$gzip = strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'gzip');
			$deflate = strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'deflate');
	
			// Determine used compression method
			$encoding = $gzip ? 'gzip' : ($deflate ? 'deflate' : 'none');
	
			// Check for buggy versions of Internet Explorer
			if (!strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'Opera') && 
				preg_match('/^Mozilla\/4\.0 \(compatible; MSIE ([0-9]\.[0-9])/i', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], $matches)) {
				$version = floatval($matches[1]);
				
				if ($version < 6)
					$encoding = 'none';
					
				if ($version == 6 && !strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'EV1')) 
					$encoding = 'none';
			}
			
			// Try the cache first to see if the combined files were already generated
			$cachefile = 'cache-' . $hash . '.' . $type . ($encoding != 'none' ? '.' . $encoding : '');
			
			if (file_exists($cachedir . '/' . $cachefile)) {
				if ($fp = fopen($cachedir . '/' . $cachefile, 'rb')) {

					if ($encoding != 'none') {
						header ("Content-Encoding: " . $encoding);
					}
				
					header ("Content-Type: text/" . $type);
					header ("Content-Length: " . filesize($cachedir . '/' . $cachefile));
		
					fpassthru($fp);
					fclose($fp);
					exit;
				}
			}
		}
	
		// Get contents of the files
		$contents = '';
		reset($elements);
		while (list(,$element) = each($elements)) {
			$path = realpath($base . '/' . $element);
			$contents .= "\n\n" . file_get_contents($path);
		}
	
		// Send Content-Type
		header ("Content-Type: text/" . $type);
		
		if (isset($encoding) && $encoding != 'none') 
		{
			// Send compressed contents
			$contents = gzencode($contents, 9, $gzip ? FORCE_GZIP : FORCE_DEFLATE);
			header ("Content-Encoding: " . $encoding);
			header ('Content-Length: ' . strlen($contents));
			echo $contents;
		} 
		else 
		{
			// Send regular contents
			header ('Content-Length: ' . strlen($contents));
			echo $contents;
		}

		// Store cache
		if ($cache) {
			if ($fp = fopen($cachedir . '/' . $cachefile, 'wb')) {
				fwrite($fp, $contents);
				fclose($fp);
			}
		}
	}

[bernie1227]

Also look here
For more information about preloading.