Problems specifically with IE7

[Guest]

Hi all,

 

I have been using these forums for about 4 months while I build a custom OSC site - the community posts and search functionality have been an absolutely fantastic resource and I thank this community for being so active.

 

However I'm now writing this post in absolute desperation - here's a link to the site I'm developing: www.aveodirect.co.uk

 

I know there is still a lot of ugliness, but my major concern at the moment is how the site looks in IE7. The site works in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and (confusingly) IE8. Now I'm not a developer, I'm a designer who dabbles in PHP so it may simply be something basic I'm missing.

 

I have noticed that all of the paths seem to be missing the main site URL (i.e. if you hover over one of my brands, it will say 'phyto.php' for example when it should be 'www.aveodirect.co.uk/phyto.php') so this is leading me to believe maybe it's something I'm missing in the config file? or maybe even a .htaccess problem??

 

I am seriously lost and the site needs to be live very soon, so please anyone who can shed absolutely any light, please do so. If/when I do find a solution, I will also post the solution in this thread as people doing that in the past have allowed me to get this far without having to submit a single post in the forum.

 

In anticipation that you need to see my admin/includes/configure.php file, here it is in all it's glory:

 

/-******************************************-/

 

define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://www.aveodirect.co.uk'); // eg, http://localhost or - https://localhost should not be NULL for productive servers

define('HTTP_CATALOG_SERVER', 'http://www.aveodirect.co.uk');

define('HTTPS_CATALOG_SERVER', 'http://www.aveodirect.co.uk');

define('ENABLE_SSL_CATALOG', 'false'); // secure webserver for catalog module

define('DIR_FS_DOCUMENT_ROOT', '/home/aveodire/public_html/'); // where your pages are located on the server. if $DOCUMENT_ROOT doesnt suit you, replace with your local path. (eg, /usr/local/apache/htdocs)

define('DIR_WS_ADMIN', '/admin/');

define('DIR_FS_ADMIN', '/public_html/admin/');

define('DIR_WS_CATALOG', 'http://www.aveodirect.co.uk');

define('DIR_FS_CATALOG', DIR_FS_DOCUMENT_ROOT);

define('DIR_WS_IMAGES', 'images/');

define('DIR_WS_ICONS', DIR_WS_IMAGES . 'icons/');

define('DIR_WS_CATALOG_IMAGES', DIR_WS_CATALOG . 'images/');

define('DIR_WS_INCLUDES', 'includes/');

define('DIR_WS_BOXES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'boxes/');

define('DIR_WS_FUNCTIONS', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'functions/');

define('DIR_WS_CLASSES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'classes/');

define('DIR_WS_MODULES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . '/modules/');

define('DIR_WS_LANGUAGES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'languages/');

define('DIR_WS_CATALOG_LANGUAGES', DIR_WS_CATALOG . 'includes/languages/');

define('DIR_FS_CATALOG_LANGUAGES', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'includes/languages/');

define('DIR_FS_CATALOG_IMAGES', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'images/');

define('DIR_FS_CATALOG_MODULES', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'includes/modules/');

define('DIR_FS_BACKUP', 'backups/');

 

// define our database connection

define('DB_SERVER', '*my database details are here*');

define('DB_SERVER_USERNAME', '*my username is here and is correct*');

define('DB_SERVER_PASSWORD', '*my password is here and is correct*');

define('DB_DATABASE', '*the database name is here and is correct*');

define('USE_PCONNECT', 'false');

define('STORE_SESSIONS', '');

 

/-******************************************-/

 

Posting in anticipation,

Andy

[MrPhil]

my major concern at the moment is how the site looks in IE7. The site works in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and (confusingly) IE8. Now I'm not a developer, I'm a designer who dabbles in PHP so it may simply be something basic I'm missing.

IE8 "works" (more or less) because it is more or less standards compliant, just as Firefox, Chrome, and Safari have always been. Remember that IE7 is that last of the "go it alone we'll bend the world to our standards says Microsoft" IE effort, most notoriously IE6.

 

That said, there are still a lot of IE6 browsers out there, and (fewer) IE7 browsers, but both their numbers are fixed and slowly declining as all new PCs are delivered with IE8 and smarter users switch over to Firefox, Chrome, etc. I wouldn't worry about IE7 as much as I would worry about it simply working (i.e., functional and not crashing, if not beautiful looking) in IE6 (and IE7).

 

I have noticed that all of the paths seem to be missing the main site URL (i.e. if you hover over one of my brands, it will say 'phyto.php' for example when it should be 'www.aveodirect.co.uk/phyto.php') so this is leading me to believe maybe it's something I'm missing in the config file? or maybe even a .htaccess problem??

Is this on a local (WAMPP/LAMPP) PC test server, or a production web-connected server? If a link says <a href="phyto.php">, that's fine (so long as phyto.php is in the same directory as whatever is linking to it). Your browser should add the domain and current path for you. The only problem is if phyto.php is in another directory, in which case the link was incorrectly coded in PHP.

 

In anticipation that you need to see my admin/includes/configure.php file, here it is in all it's glory:

includes/configure.php is set up similarly?

[NodsDorf]

Just to re-iterate MrPhil's thoughts.

 

IE 7 is only usable by those with XP or later OS. As such Microsoft will continually bother them until they upgrade to IE 8. So I can't see many people sticking with IE 7.

The more likely case is that somebody is running IE 6 which would be those still running Windows 2000. (I have a friend who will not switch). He however, already knows that his Internet Browser is out of date and when he encounters issues for what he does on the net, he opens FireFox and trys again.

[Guest]

Thank you both for your responses - both are useful and good reads! Yes Microsoft did a good job of screwing us over with the earlier IE's didn't they?? I wouldn't normally be concerned but unfortunately a huge amount of this websites users are IE users, with a good amount (300 - 500 or so a month) are specifically IE7 users. As to why they use IE7 is completely beyond me, as you said they will be getting bugged constantly to upgrade - but it does mean I do have to take those users into consideration and make the website at least work for them and display images - which it does not at the moment.

 

I am actually working on the live site, so what you see now is where I'm up to with it. Again that link is www.aveodirect.co.uk - if you have the ability to open it up in IE7 (or IE8 in compatibility mode) please do so. Then from the home page, if you hover over any of the brands, you will see what I mean with the pages. Using the phyto.php example again, when you hover over the link this is the exact link it wants to take you to: 'http:///phyto.php' - so IE7 isn't actually getting the domain from somewhere. Does that make sense? if not I will try to explain better.

 

My configure.php files are actually different - I haven't even paid attention to the includes/configure.php in a while - I thought admin/includes/configure.php was the important one - oops? Could this be the cause?

 

Here is my includes/configure.php:

 

/-******************************************-/

 

// Define the webserver and path parameters

// * DIR_FS_* = Filesystem directories (local/physical)

// * DIR_WS_* = Webserver directories (virtual/URL)

define('HTTP_SERVER', ''); // eg, http://localhost - should not be empty for productive servers

define('HTTPS_SERVER', ''); // eg, https://localhost - should not be empty for productive servers

define('ENABLE_SSL', false); // secure webserver for checkout procedure?

define('HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN', '');

define('HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN', '');

define('HTTP_COOKIE_PATH', '');

define('HTTPS_COOKIE_PATH', '');

define('DIR_WS_HTTP_CATALOG', '');

define('DIR_WS_HTTPS_CATALOG', '');

define('DIR_WS_IMAGES', 'images/');

define('DIR_WS_ICONS', DIR_WS_IMAGES . 'icons/');

define('DIR_WS_INCLUDES', 'includes/');

define('DIR_WS_BOXES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'boxes/');

define('DIR_WS_FUNCTIONS', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'functions/');

define('DIR_WS_CLASSES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'classes/');

define('DIR_WS_MODULES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'modules/');

define('DIR_WS_LANGUAGES', DIR_WS_INCLUDES . 'languages/');

 

define('DIR_WS_DOWNLOAD_PUBLIC', 'pub/');

define('DIR_FS_CATALOG', dirname($HTTP_SERVER_VARS['SCRIPT_FILENAME']) . '/');

define('DIR_FS_DOWNLOAD', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'download/');

define('DIR_FS_DOWNLOAD_PUBLIC', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'pub/');

 

// define our database connection

define('DB_SERVER', '213.171.200.58'); // eg, localhost - should not be empty for productive servers

define('DB_SERVER_USERNAME', '*my username is here and is correct*');

define('DB_SERVER_PASSWORD', '*my password is here and is correct*');

define('DB_DATABASE', '*my database name is here and is correct*');

define('USE_PCONNECT', 'false'); // use persistent connections?

define('STORE_SESSIONS', ''); // leave empty '' for default handler or set to 'mysql'

 

/-******************************************-/

 

Could this be the cause to my headache??? and if so, do the settings simply need to mirror the admin configure.php file??

 

Again, apologies if I'm missing something simple and am wasting your time - I've had to wrap my head around an awful lot of php code in this project which I'm not familiar with at all.

 

Andy

[Guest]

Isn't it funny how 1 line of text can completely change things?

 

I have now fixed everything in IE7 by simply mirroring my settings between configure.php files - thank you both for prompting me to look there!!

 

For anyone else who has this problem (I'm guessing you will be very few and far between) simply make sure you set up the basics correctly first - as you can see from the above posts I did not do this. Everything works perfectly now and displays OK (not perfect, but that's CSS issues not OSC issues)

 

Thanks again both, I can't thank you enough.

 

Andy

[NodsDorf]

Isn't it funny how 1 line of text can completely change things?

 

I have now fixed everything in IE7 by simply mirroring my settings between configure.php files - thank you both for prompting me to look there!!

 

For anyone else who has this problem (I'm guessing you will be very few and far between) simply make sure you set up the basics correctly first - as you can see from the above posts I did not do this. Everything works perfectly now and displays OK (not perfect, but that's CSS issues not OSC issues)

 

Thanks again both, I can't thank you enough.

 

Andy

 

Great to hear, I was just getting ready to post an example of a working configure.php file for you. :)