I have deployed a site largely based on techniques I learned from this 
book.  Access is being allowed to about 100 people as a test.  All is well 
except that (1) 2 Windows 98 IE 5 users are getting Internet Explorer non-
recoverable errors when they attempt to use a dropdown list, (3) a 
Macintosh Internet Explorer 6 user is crashing on the use of any control, 
and Netscape renders the login screen like it randomly scrambled the 
elements of a jigsaw puzzle.  
I?m wondering if there is something fundamental I don?t know about 
enabling access to machines other than Win 2K and XP.  Any ideas?
I absolutely love ASP.NET and C#.  I could never have done such a complex 
data-intensive web site so rapidly using older technology, but I thought 
that one of ASP.NET?s wonderful features was that it took care of browser 
differences for us developers who have better things to do.
The book is fantastic!  And this forum is marvelous.  Thanks.
Portia Isaacson, Future Computing

Portia Isaacson Bass wrote:
> I have deployed a site largely based on techniques I learned from this
> book.  Access is being allowed to about 100 people as a test.  All is
> well except that (1) 2 Windows 98 IE 5 users are getting Internet
> Explorer non- recoverable errors when they attempt to use a dropdown
> list, (3) a Macintosh Internet Explorer 6 user is crashing on the use
> of any control, and Netscape renders the login screen like it
> randomly scrambled the elements of a jigsaw puzzle.
> I'm wondering if there is something fundamental I don't know about
> enabling access to machines other than Win 2K and XP.  Any ideas?
> I absolutely love ASP.NET and C#.  I could never have done such a
> complex data-intensive web site so rapidly using older technology,
> but I thought that one of ASP.NET's wonderful features was that it
> took care of browser differences for us developers who have better
> things to do. The book is fantastic!  And this forum is marvellous. 
> 
 
Portia I'm impressed with the testing that you are doing.  The results
you are coming up with are valuable. 

I'd be interested in any details you want to share.

My only thought about your symptoms is:
"randomly scrambled the elements of a jigsaw puzzle"  Is the ASPX page
in grid or flow mode?  If it's in grid mode try reworking it to flow
mode and see what happens.

For the Win98/IE5 users this may help.  Save the source as a new web
page (*.htm may be good).  It's best that this save is from one of the
machines that glitches (there should only be two versions of the output,
HTML 3.2 and IE5.5+).  Examine it to see if there are any obvious
anomalies.  Experiment with the source until you narrow down the cause.
(I can run a few checks on the page code, with automated tools if you
like.  I can't run tests with that browser, I don't have a copy
installed.  If you'd like me to run those checks you could mail me the
htm at info@d...  No guarantees of a solution though!)

Mike Gale, Decision Engineering (NZ) Ltd.

After additional testing the status is:
1. Win 98 IE 5 clients are now working with no known problems.  The fix:
first I discovered that the dropdowns on only one page were not working,
others were, so I started exploring the differences between the working and
the nonworking.  I think (although am not certain) the problem was that the
dropdowns that failed with an IE page fault in MSHTML.dll were on a POSITION
ABSOLUTE page but were not within a table used to space page elements.  I
put them in a table and now all is well.  The other noticeable difference
between the working and nonworking dropdowns was the fact that the working
dropdowns were loaded programmatically.  However, since on the non-working
page, the grid next page was also failing with the page fault and worked
after the changes, I am reasonably sure the problem was with ABSOLUTE
POSIITONING not inside spacing table.  I am not using FLOW because I require
more control over the layout.  Good suggestions, however, and may have cured
the problem.  Sorry I have not had time to explore it.
2. Mac IE 5 (latest) symptoms have not changed but we now have a better
description:  after Submit button is pressed an error message is given, but
it goes on to serve the correct next page.  The error message after the
Login Button is "sn.hif.sourceIndex is not an object" Messages vary.
However, some controls are just non-operational, for example, a command link
in a grid.  As I have only one user with a Mac and no Mac for testing, I do
not have as much information as I would like.
3. Netscape:  have nothing new, but will explore further.

Thanks for your help.

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Mike Gale [mailto:info@d...]
Sent:	Thursday, October 24, 2002 2:03 PM
To:	Website Programming with ASP.NET
Subject:	[aspdotnet_website_programming] RE: Macintosh, Windows 98 and
Netscape

Portia Isaacson Bass wrote:
> I have deployed a site largely based on techniques I learned from this
> book.  Access is being allowed to about 100 people as a test.  All is
> well except that (1) 2 Windows 98 IE 5 users are getting Internet
> Explorer non- recoverable errors when they attempt to use a dropdown
> list, (3) a Macintosh Internet Explorer 6 user is crashing on the use
> of any control, and Netscape renders the login screen like it
> randomly scrambled the elements of a jigsaw puzzle.
> I'm wondering if there is something fundamental I don't know about
> enabling access to machines other than Win 2K and XP.  Any ideas?
> I absolutely love ASP.NET and C#.  I could never have done such a
> complex data-intensive web site so rapidly using older technology,
> but I thought that one of ASP.NET's wonderful features was that it
> took care of browser differences for us developers who have better
> things to do. The book is fantastic!  And this forum is marvellous.
>

Portia I'm impressed with the testing that you are doing.  The results
you are coming up with are valuable.

I'd be interested in any details you want to share.

My only thought about your symptoms is:
"randomly scrambled the elements of a jigsaw puzzle"  Is the ASPX page
in grid or flow mode?  If it's in grid mode try reworking it to flow
mode and see what happens.

For the Win98/IE5 users this may help.  Save the source as a new web
page (*.htm may be good).  It's best that this save is from one of the
machines that glitches (there should only be two versions of the output,
HTML 3.2 and IE5.5+).  Examine it to see if there are any obvious
anomalies.  Experiment with the source until you narrow down the cause.
(I can run a few checks on the page code, with automated tools if you
like.  I can't run tests with that browser, I don't have a copy
installed.  If you'd like me to run those checks you could mail me the
htm at info@d...  No guarantees of a solution though!)

Mike Gale, Decision Engineering (NZ) Ltd.