[thelist] Site never finished loading on Mac

[Eric Benvenue-Jennings]

I'm running into something that I've seen many times but have never seen
addressed or discussed. It has to do with Mac compatibility and some web sites.
Basically, when visiting some sites, a page will appear to have loaded in it's
entirety but my browser acts as if the page never finishes loading.

For example, this page:

http://rapid13.org/main/

When I view this page in Mac IE 5, the full page is visible but my cursor
continues to spin and the progress bar indicates that the page isn't finished
loading. The browser stays in this state until I get an alert dialog box saying
that there was a connection failure even though I can see the entire contents of
the page and if I view the source code I see the complete html document.

In Netscape Communicator 4+ I get one of two different responses (depending on
the position of the stars, I suppose): either the window stays looking like a
blank page with the progress bar moving and N logo continuing to pulse until I
click the STOP button at which point the page contents finally appear with the
words "Transfer interrupted" at the bottom OR the page seems to finish loading
but when I click on a link the "Transfer interrupted" message appears.

Another site that this occurs with is http://www.etour.com. I actually worked
for them for a while and the behavior occurred on every Mac in the building. I
complained about it for a long time but got tired of hearing that it was a Mac
issue and therefore not worthy of examination so I just grit my teeth and put up
with it. I've been seeing this behavior for a long time and I just chalked it up
to yet another compatibility issue between my Mac and the rest of the world.

I now find myself running into a similar issue with a cgi I'm installing and
it's been elevated from a minor annoyance to an issue that is interfering with
my ability to get any work done. The behavior with the cgi is so similar that
I'm sure it's the same issue. (see http://rapid13.org/cgi-bin/art.cgi )

I've got Virtual PC and the behavior never occurs under it. It is truly a Mac
issue. So, now on to the questions:

First, can some other Mac users duplicate and confirm this behavior?

Is there a known incompatibility between certain servers with Mac clients that
causes this?

Is there anything that can be done in the coding that might address this and/or
make the browser recognize that the data transfer has been completed?

Is there something I can do on a system level to prevent this problem from
occurring in the first place? (I guess that would mean it's a Mac issue and not
a server issue like I have been assuming.)

Finally, I am now wondering if the issue might also exist with ftp servers - I
have often had similar difficulties using the various Mac ftp clients and I
never made the connection to the web page issue.

I should mention that I'm using Mac OS 9.1 although I seem to recall the problem
pre-dating this particular OS.

Anybody?

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Eric Benvenue Jennings
404-819-5023
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dba Rapid 13
558 Seal Place
Atlanta GA 30308-1818
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http://rapid13.org
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