Website links require user to loose focus to work .....

[wiggum123]

Ive got a weird problem with the school website here.

Its a Joomla site which I have inherited from the previous techs. They have created a custom template and all seems to be working on my machine, and most of the school computers.

 

The problem occours when a user clicks on any link on the page within IE. The computer makes the click noise and the loading bar empties on the bottom of the browser but nothing happens, no matter how long you wait. The fix is to loose focus on the window, so minimising the page, opening another tab, selecting another program all work. The page will then load up. You can quickly switch back to the site and see the page load up. It only seems to effect some computers and crosses many versions of IE. I have tried updating IE to the latest version on some of the workstations, installing the latest flash player (used to have a slideshow on the frontpage and thought this was messing things up).

I’m guessing there is some javascript in there somewhere waiting for some event that never happens?

I have tried to go through the code as best I can but I’m no PHP/Javascript expert.

Does anyone else here get the same problem when viewing the site, or have heard of anything like this before?

 

www.beaufortcs.com

[rosswilson]

I've just had a look at your site and i'm curious about a section of JavaScript that you're using. Look for the div tag with an ID of "_atssh". Within this is a few lines of JavaScript that appears to be related to the bookmark sharing service addthis.com. Is this meant to be on your site?

 

There is a lot of Google Analytics JavaScript in your page source, some of which seems to be duplicated many times. Maybe there is something going on here with regards to the duplicated Google Analytics code all trying to record the users navigation and clicking of links? I can't imagine they are playing too nicely together.

 

Apart from the large amount of JavaScript being used on the site I noticed that you're using jQuery. I know that jQuery has the ablity to hook into mouse clicks, possibly try using the latest jQuery version?

 

It's a difficult problem to diagnose with so much JavaScript going on, all in seperate .js files. However I hope this is off some use.

 

Ross

[wiggum123]

Hi Ross, thanks for the advice.

I have removed the duplicated analytics code and completely taken out the add this stuff but I am still having trouble. I will try updating the jquery this weekend. I wonder if it's anything to do with jquery running in non conflict mode. Because some of the plugins and such use the mootools library I had to make jquery run in this compatabity mode. I'll have a go at taking this off. Problem is that it's so hard to replicate. All of my machines run it fine. Even new virtual machines are ok!!

Ben

[wiggum123]

Hey anyone

I have tidied up as much JS as I can. Many of the external JS files are added in by the various modules so I doubt I can do much with them.

I have run the hopepage through a few web validators including the W3C and none have come up with any massive errors.

 

Can I ask a favour of anyone reading this, could you please go to BeaufortCS.com, try clicking on a link like the student page, then post a quick reply stating wether or not the page loaded without you having to minimise/maximise the window along with your OS and browser version.

[rosswilson]

Worked for me wiggum123 Running on Mac and using Chrome.

 

Ross

[MK-2]

works here too. xp and ie8

[skunk]

Works here, Win7 and ie8.

 

Have you any filtering software running, like smoothwall. These can sometimes filter out js from pages without letting you know. Especially if the js libraries are hosted externaly.

[wiggum123]

We dont have any local firewalls, and the problem (as far as I know) only seems to effect local machines. I havnt been able to replicate the error outside of the school. Our webserver is also local and is running SME Server 8

[skunk]

Do you have any Group/Local Policies which restrict javascripts on these machines?

[wiggum123]

I hadnt even thought of that. I can't think of anything in particular that I've set but when I get in tomorrow I'll try logging in as an admin and see what that does.