Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

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Bellhead
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Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#1 Post by Bellhead »

So, if you've seen my overly-happy post in the smile thread, you know. If you haven't, here's the short version:

I found a way to make the Twokinds homepage my desktop background. The webpage is fully functional, and links work. When it works, anyway...

I am using Windows XP Pro SP2. Started with IE6. Eventually, it just started to refuse to load some pages. It won't load the main site, or google, or its own IP address, but it will load the Tesla supercharger map and weather.gov no problem. Tried downloading IE7, same thing.

Halfway through loading, I get this error:

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site <sitename>.
Operation aborted.

Then it brings me to the "you're not connected to the internet" page. And yes, the internet works quite well in Firefox 28, and I know full well how bad IE is. I just need IE so I can have the site as my background.

Both 6 and 7 loaded it perfectly, once, then never again, so I know it can. It just doesn't. Anyone know how to tell it to just load the page?
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multilis
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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#2 Post by multilis »

My best guess is due to a bug in caching the webpage or storing cookie related to site. Most likely bug is a "user permissions" issue, the application that draws your desktop is a certain "user" with certain permissions, the IE7 browser is running under the user name you logged into computer with which is different. One has trouble reading the cache of the other "denied access" and program craps out.

But there may be different similar issues, example of communicating with a 'server' at same website as code that is somehow getting confused with location because it is desktop rather than IE so is missing some extra patch to help get around an older bug.

The testing cure would then be clear cache and/or clear cookies and see if it works once. If it does then go to site specific preferences in your internet settings and see if you can find a way to disable the cache and/or cookies just for this site.... downside is you would have to have live internet each time for website to come up.

Alternative cure is to do the ctrl-alt-del or whatever to get task manager up, look at tasks running and show tasks for all users rather than current user and try to figure out which task is drawing the desktop, then which "user" that task is logged in as. Once you figure that out, you figure out where the internet cache is being stored, and/or cookies are being stored, look at who has permission to access them using windows explorer, properties on the directory, "advanced?" tab permissions setting, sorry don't remember this part exactly... and tinker so that the 2 different "users" (desktop and logged in user account) can read and write each others files in this directory.

Sorry, long explanation and techie, not sure it will work without testing.

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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#3 Post by multilis »

One other word of warning... sometimes using desktop html code in some buggy versions of windows has strange occasional "lets corrupt some files" end result.

Best guess of reason: Windows has something called virtual memory, and files on your hard disk are sometimes mapped as "memory" to gain performance edge, less flips between "user" and "supervisor"/kernel privilege level in your CPU. Occasionally bug can make that confused so that Windows literally trashes the contents of a file or overruns that file to trash contents of random spot on your hard disk.

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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#4 Post by Bellhead »

Double post.I am the only user on this OS, so there is no physical way it can be using another user's process. That said, this has happened many a-time before, and has always been attributed to an aging browser viewing a new website. That said, all I want to do is make the old browser view the new webpage.

By the way, it is IE that the desktop is using. It says so. I'm using XP, not 8.1, there is only one defualt internet browser that comes with the OS, and only one that Windows can use with everything internet related.

My current belief is that IE is selectively blocking sites that aren't designed for older browsers, on account of it starts to load then stops. And it's definately not a security thing; I tried disabling it.
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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#5 Post by Bellhead »

I'll assume by the lack of new responses to this thread, that either nobody knows what to do, people forgot, or both.

So I'll add a new one, same general issue, though.
I set the webpage to be a part of my desktop. When I boot, it automatically loads the page as it would load drivers and startup programs, but it comes up with a series of errors:

An error has orrurred in the script on this page.
Line: 449
Char: 1
Error: Object doesn't support this property or method
Code: 0
URL: http://www.twokinds.keenspot.com/ks_headbar.js

An error has orrurred in the script on this page.
Line: 1
Char: 5
Error: Expected ';'
Code: 0
URL: http://www.twokinds.keenspot.com/geotest.php

and

An error has orrurred in the script on this page.
Line: 449
Char: 1
Error: HTML Parsing Error: Unable to modify the parent container element before the child element is closed (KB927917)
Code: 0
URL: http://www.twokinds.keenspot.com/

It's probably worth noting that I have updated to XP sp3, and IE8. This post was written using IE8, and I can see the man page reliably with it, just not as part of the desktop. Anyone know what to do with this?
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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#6 Post by Myperson54 »

First off, all of those urls should not have a www in front of them. Those links result in an additional error because of that.

I can't exactly solve any of these errors because of that issue, and because keenspot won't let you edit their files. However, I can tell you what the errors already say.

The first one is a JavaScript error - it's trying to perform some function on an object which can't be manipulated in that way. That requires either an update of JavaScript or a recode.

The second, someone forgot a semicolon on the specified line, breaking the code.

The third case involves an object being changed before objects dependent on it being unloaded. It's akin to trying to install drivers while a dependent program is running. It won't work.

You probably can't solve any of these errors without contacting keenspot themselves, if I were to guess.
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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#7 Post by puredeathly »

Myperson54 wrote:You probably can't solve any of these errors without contacting keenspot themselves, if I were to guess.
I would guess so too.

Also there's a reason why there are updates/replacements to IE... (and XP that is)
It is full of bugs and you most likely encountered some of them (or incompatibilities with websites written for modern browsers).
Any reason for you to stay on XP? (lightweight Linux distros and Win8 and newer would most likely run on older hardware (idk your hardware specs but win10 runs fine with 2GB of RAM on a single core 2GHz Pentium CPU))

-Jakob

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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#8 Post by Bellhead »

Uhh, yeeeaaaah.... This machine HAS 10, which overwrote 8.1, because I wanted something other than the two buggy and frustrating Vista installs.

Then I suffered a hardware failure, and had to move from an '06 Dell Inspiron at 2.66 Ghz to this, a 2005-ish Gateway E-6500d at 2.8 Ghz, which crashes while booting to 10, and reboots itself shortly after starting the boot to either of the Vista installs.

I'm assuming that this machine can't run anything newer than XP, because XP is all that works on it. It's been faster and more consistent than any other OS I've ever used to date, 10 and 8.1 included. Also, I'm not about to be given a new shell to put this serial-ATA 1 tb hdd in, because this's all I've got access to, and even this was a stretch.
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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#9 Post by Myperson54 »

It'll run Xubuntu, Lubuntu, CentOS, or any other lightweight linux distro perfectly well, although installing an entirely new OS is probably overkill for a problem of this sort.

Since we've determined that the error likely resides with incompatible web technology, is there another place the comic's pages are hosted that we can use in lieu of Keenspot? I'm not sure which of the comic's mirrors are all of: (still running, Up-to-date, non-dynamic). I'd suggest Amenon's search engine, but he uses iframes, so that might not even work.
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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#10 Post by amenon »

Myperson54 wrote:Since we've determined that the error likely resides with incompatible web technology, is there another place the comic's pages are hosted that we can use in lieu of Keenspot? I'm not sure which of the comic's mirrors are all of: (still running, Up-to-date, non-dynamic). I'd suggest Amenon's search engine, but he uses iframes, so that might not even work.
Oh, mine would be useless for this purpose.

I would just suggest... well, I would just suggest not doing this thing, for it is fundamentally dangerous to use an unsupported/unupdated browser to access the Internet. But overlooking that, I would just disable javascript in IE. If that's all you're using it for, you won't miss it. I think these instructions look about right. No scripts, no script errors.
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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#11 Post by Myperson54 »

I've tested to confirm that disabling javascript has no adverse effects on the operation of Keenspot comics' homepages, although I have to wonder: Will Bellhead not still get PHP errors? Or will PHP simply not do anything as a result of disabling javascript?
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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#12 Post by amenon »

Myperson54 wrote:I've tested to confirm that disabling javascript has no adverse effects on the operation of Keenspot comics' homepages, although I have to wonder: Will Bellhead not still get PHP errors? Or will PHP simply not do anything as a result of disabling javascript?
That's an error in inline javascript on a page (ostensibly) generated by PHP, not a PHP error :P
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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#13 Post by Myperson54 »

Well Today I Learned. Thanks, my knowledge of web languages only goes as far as html and css.
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Re: Internet Explorer (Yeah, I know.)

#14 Post by Bellhead »

I hereby thank you for your suggestion, whole heartedly, because it worked. For now, at least.

I'll be back if it stops working, but aside form that, thank you very very much.

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