Question

We mainly use Mozilla as our browser, but some users have IE 6.0

Twiki pages don't render properly with IE (attached forms are missing for example), but if the HTML generated for Mozilla is stored in a file, then IE renders this properly.

The difference seems to be extra CR/LF pairs in the Mozilla version and &rsquo not ' in the IE version

Why are they created differently? How can I get the IE version to be the same as the Mozilla version, which works?

Environment

TWiki version:	Feb 2003
TWiki plugins:
Server OS:	Red Hat 7.3
Web server:	Apache 1.3.27
Perl version:	Perl 5.6.1
Client OS:	Windows XP
Web Browser:	Mozilla 1.4 IE 6.0

-- ChrisHogan - 04 Aug 2003

Answer

Solution: it was a bug in TypographyPlugin, see below -- RD

TWiki's core code does no browser detection so it isn't rendering them differently - I use IE5.5 all the time and many others use IE6, so this is most likely something specific to your TWiki site or your IE6 setup.

Please attach two examples of the rendered HTML, one for Mozilla and one for IE6. It may be something to do with character sets - sometimes if the browser thinks it is in character set X, it will render characters not in that charset as &xyz; type encodings. Try checking that the 'View | Encodings' is set to 'Auto Select' (checked).

Please also attach the testenv output as mentioned in SupportGuidelines. Are you using any of the InternationalisationEnhancements, e.g. a non-standard charset?

-- RichardDonkin - 04 Aug 2003

I've attached the two variants, plus the testenv results. I looked at 'View | Encodings' - set to Western Europe, but oddly when it Auto Selects it switched to Cyrillic. Fixing it as Western Europe didn't help. I've not aware that we've set any localisations. I don't believe we've even set it to UK english (as opposed to US).

This could well be our configuration - we've moved the bin, lib & pub that TWiki is using to a separate (supposedly more secure) area, resetting TWiki.cfg, etc. Everything seemed to work, but nobody doing the move thought to retest IE...

-- ChrisHogan - 04 Aug 2003

The CR/LFs should not really matter, I think browsers just ignore this. The main issue is a line looking like this in the IE6 version:

<span style='background : #FFFFC0&rsquo;>

Something is transforming the correct single quote (decimal 39) seen in Mozilla to an HTML ’ entity (right single quote) - since Microsoft products are notorious for doing this 'smart quoting', I suspect IE6 is at fault here, but I don't really have much of a clue as to why it's doing this.

You could try just eliminating this bit of HTML altogether, which may fix things, or writing it differently using CSS, but it would be better to find out why IE is doing this. Please update BrowserIssues if you find anything conclusive.

The Cyrillic thing is rather odd - could it be that your web server is sending out HTTP headers requesting Cyrillic? This would explain why IE is auto-switching. Try doing =wget -S http://your-URL= to see what the headers are. Also, check the IE6 setup to see if it has been told Cyrillic is the default somehow.

I don't think the bin/lib setup would affect this - I noticed that $defaultUrlHost is not set in TWiki.cfg, which should be fixed, though.

-- RichardDonkin - 05 Aug 2003

I've ased the ISP support team about the Cyrillic, but... I tried Opera, same problem as IE, when it identifies itself as IE 5.0 , but when it says its Mozilla or Opera, it works fine. This must be at the server end?

-- ChrisHogan - 05 Aug 2003

Richard, could you do me a great favour? My ISP is disputing the reponsibility of this problem, but I'm losing any IE functionailty on this site. Could you, as a working TWiki user look at say, http://www.everiware.com/bin/view , - this works perfectly for a Mozilla//Netscape client, but then my IE client works with TWiki.org, so if your IE doesn't work with this it MUST be my ISP - I grovel & ask for help.

I've also saved the mozilla generated HTML aa a static page & that does work with IE, so Apache can't be blamed(?) & it looks like my ISP?.

I've have one guy suggest it's a blocking problem:- the CR.LF get inserted at the end of a block & then the breaks across a block cause the unbalanced replaces of characters.

I'm getting this on lots of different pages (e.g. "Add form" doesn't appear on an edit page under IE when it does under Mozilla, in this case it seems that "--" is being replaced with &ndash, so closing coments aere ignored and bits of pages are being swept up into coments.

-- ChrisHogan - 07 Aug 2003

TWiki does not replace -- with an mdash. The mdash problems sounds like a known issue of TypographyPlugin. Do you have this Plugin installed. If so disable it to check. BTW, it is always good to list the Plugins installed.

-- PeterThoeny - 08 Aug 2003

Once complicating aspect with this discussion is Mozilla's behaviour when saving content. If you try to save a web page using Mozilla you end up with what Mozilla think the web page's source should be, not what the web page's source is.

For example if the TWiki source is:

| Bla | Bla | Bla |

TWiki generates the HTML:

<table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1"> <tr><td>  Bla  </td><td>  Bla  </td><td>  Bla  </td></tr>

If you view the source saved by Mozilla for the same page however you get:

<table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1"> <tbody><tr><td>  Bla  </td><td>  Bla  </td><td>  Bla  </td></tr>
</tbody></table>

Note the added tbody tag & extra new line.

The reason by the looks of things as to why Mozilla does this looks at least in part to do with the fact that TWiki's DOCTYPE is XHTML. I suspect that Mozilla would do this anyway since I seem to recall it used to do this sort of thing with stuff in the past as well. It's possible the doctype is confusing MSIE 6. (However if the twiki pages are stored on an Samba/CIFS partition or another windows file system this could also be the source of the problems)

-- TWikiGuest- 08 Aug 2003

I get the same problem on Chris' site when using IE 5.5, so it's not just IE6. However, I suspect TypographyPlugin if installed as that would also explain the 'smart quote' style corruption of the single quote in the WebHome page. Not sure why this wouldn't affect Mozilla, though... Definitely a good idea to disable all plugins while debugging this, and post list of those installed.

-- RichardDonkin - 08 Aug 2003

We did have the TypographyPlugin installed & disabling it does fix two out of 3 problems - the "disapearing" sections on the main page & a corruption on the GNU skin used in one web. Not using the TypographyPlugin won't hurt us, so that's our solution for now. Puzzling that Opera was affected when it pretended to be IE, but that must lie in the processing performed within the plugin. More importantly, we are seeing that forms attached to topics are displaying properly under Mozilla, but not IE. I'll have to experiment with a few settings & see if we can track down why.

My apologies for not listing plugins - we've actually got 27 installed on this particular site as it's a bit of a "playground" for some developments we are starting.

-- ChrisHogan - 11 Aug 2003

I've added a note on plugins to the SupportGuidelines. Can you put a comment on TypographyPluginDev to alert people to the bug in this plugin?

-- RichardDonkin - 12 Aug 2003

The other oddities (except one) disappeared with the TypographyPlugin disablement. A little difference in the background colour of the icons in the GnuSkin ,but I assume that's IE and is acceptable.

One final puzzlement. At the bottom of a edit screen TWiki puts couple of lines:

<script language="JavaScript"></script>
<input type="hidden" name="formtemplate" value="" />

and so on, except that with IE we getting

<script language="JavaScript">

so the bottom part of the display isn't appearing its all "eaten up" into the script. This is even with all plugins disabled.

-- ChrisHogan - 12 Aug 2003

Extra to my last comment - its with the GnuSkin that this problem occurs with IE. With the default skin its fine. I'll try & see if I can find anymore details & cross check with the GnuSkin development.

-- ChrisHogan - 12 Aug 2003