[thelist] IE6 doesnt like spacer gifs?

[Roger Ly]

>Has anyone else ever seen this, where IE6 will sometimes display
>"spacer.gif" images as broken, even though they definitely aren't? If
you >right click them and select "load image" it shows up fine, but why
should >you even have to do that if the image is definitely where it
says it is?

Interesting, 

I've actually started to see that happening more in the past few months.
We definitely have some configurations in here that exhibit the problem,
and some that never do.  Six months ago, the problem never happened --
today it does, even on pages that haven't changed since then.

I can't seem to narrow it down specifically to a version of IE or a
version of the OS.  We've got it happening on machines ranging from 98
to 2K and XP.  I've seen it on 5.5 and 6.0.   I've seen it on the same
machine that was running 5.5 and upgraded to 6.0.  Both the before and
after exhibited the same problem.

A quick look at things shows the following:

* Sometimes the images show up, more often they do not
* If one spacer image shows up broken, they all do (other images are
fine)
* Running the browser through a proxy shows that the browser doesn't
even REQUEST the image in the scenarios where the image shows up broken.
* It has nothing to do with the name of the image, or its location
relative to the root of the server.  
* It has nothing to do with the actual image itself.

The only thing that seems to be consistent:  The problem only manifests
itself when there are several instances of the same image on the page.
If you only had one spacer image on your page, you most likely won't
receive the broken image.  If you had ten or more, you probably will (if
you have a browser that exhibits the behavior).

I don't think this will help you really solve the problem, but at least
you'll have an idea of where to start looking. 

If you figure anything out, I'd love to hear about it too.

Roger