PlanetCatfish.com

@andywoolloo - you're an ifan? If you still get the issue, any chance of posting a video on youtube?

Jools

It's a bug in IE8, there is a workaround for both end user (compatibility view, which is, in essence, "show me the page in IE7") and for us to adopt, but the solution, really, is to upgrade to IE9 or use a different browser.

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &t=1700275
http://www.ozzu.com/website-design-foru ... 99866.html
http://grantovich.net/misc/ie8-textarea-bug/

Jools

I've FINALLY found an old PC with IE8 on it and have replicated the problem - now I can test and see if it can be fixed.

I would still say upgrade to IE9, but for people on low or pay-as-you-go bandwidth, like Shane, I will see if it can be patched.

I just wanted to avoid fixing loads of IE8 issues when an upgrade fixes them anyway.

Jools

Since IE9 doesn't install on Windows XP I have a feeling IE8 will be around for the foreseeable future.

That's a fair point Trent and I had a deeper look into it.

In terms of support, Microsoft ended support for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) on July 13, 2010 (Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) ends on July 12, 2011). A flimsy extended support agreement is in place for SP3 (or SP2 if you're running 64bit and there will never be SP3 for 64bit) until 2014, but it delivers nothing. Windows XP is capable of running a whole load of other browsers too and has been noted the compatibility view feature just reverts IE8 to IE7 "behaviour" and gets around this problem.

Planet is fairly behind the curve in terms of adoption of new standards, even so we still struggle with old Microsoft hacks come 2014!

However, looking at the numbers in our access stats, last month, 85% of our visitors use windows, 38% of that use windows XP, of which, 12% use the forum.

So, for every 100 visitors, 85 use windows, 32 use XP and then 4 use the forum. I have no idea how many of that 4 out of 100 write longer posts. Let's assume .5. In the last week, we had 42,725 unique visitors. So the issue affects a generous maximum 214 users, or 0.5% and has one click workaround.

As I say, I've fixed it (I think), but I'm not keen on hacking away at IE8 issues. This one I felt I should fix as I feel anyone taking the time to write a half decent post should be helped out.

Especially if they are in Uganda and type with one finger.

Jools

Just to mention that companies are probably more slow at adopting new OS's. We have one PC in our department using Windows 7, and I just got a report that our "tools installer" (which is the thing you use to install the entire set of software we use for everything from writing doucments, writing code, compiling said code for both x86 and ARM, etc) says, when installing on Win7, that "This is OS is not supported, but we are planning to release a version that does in Q4 2010" - now, that is from the LATEST versiokn, issued in March! So I think it will be a while before we are completely free of XP in our company.

By the way, is the change you've made related to the way the text-area looks, see attached?

Also, I'm surprised the number of Windows access to the site isn't higher - but perhaps it's misleading where the bots have a higher than average access to the site, and they probably don't come from a Windows system. But I guess there are a fair number of ipads and iphones out there too...

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Mats

MatsP wrote:By the way, is the change you've made related to the way the text-area looks, see attached?

?

Jools

Sorry, I copied the screen, then got distracted by some other thoughts, and forgot to even paste it into Irfanview.

Sorry about that... But the text area is narrower (smaller) now...

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Mats

Yeah, well that means I changed the right bit! If it fixes the issue then I will adjust, but that will need to wait until tomorrow...

Jools

OK, so I am moving this to resolved. I've implemented the fix that will improve but not cure the problem. The fact is that it's a fault in MS IE 8 and the technical (stylesheet) fixes only work some of the time depending on screen resolution and other factors (text size, browser zoom) and so on. I can (as you saw over the last two days) also set the text area size quite small and that makes it less likely to break, but it disadvantages all users - so it's a balance I've struck between all users and small posts versus MS IE 8 users with long posts. I hope I've got it about right.

Additionally, various solutions are as follows:

1) Be careful when you type long posts and scroll back up when it goes wrong. No text is lost, it's just hidden. Tricky for non-experts.

2) If you must use IE8, try clicking the compatibility view icon and the right of the browser address bar (looks like a ripped piece of paper and is meant to symbolise a broken page I guess and is next to the two arrows refresh and red cross stop icons). This will force IE8 to interpret the page as IE7 would, so you get all the IE7 bugs, but this issue is fixed!

3) Use another browser, this issue does not occur in ANY VERSION of Google chrome, Mozilla firefox and Apple safari.

4) If you're running Windows Vista or 7, upgrade to MSIE 9.

Hope that assists, but it's all I can do.

Jools

Thanks Jools

Cheers
Geoff