I.E 6

I.E 6

Barry Bell - ން
Number of replies: 10

General Information:

I have noticed that on version 6.0.2800.1106 of I.E. 6 there may be problems connecting to moodle sites. You will not see this happen on the server that has moodle installed. I have several machines that connect to moodle and find that sometimes I.E. wont connect however, Opera or Netscape will connect with no problems. Connect is the wrong word to use, it will connect and you may see your title screen but it will just sit there. Again the other browsers don't have this problem. And I.E. 5 works fine.

The big problem here is it dosen't happen all the time however, to often in my testing.

 P.S. I should mention this problem started with version 1.7 of moodle. I run my systems on a cable modem with a switch and and a hub connecting 6 computers.

If anyone else can test this and let us know! I would test the connection at 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm and 10:00 to 1:00 am. and let me know what you find.

Thanks

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In reply to Barry Bell

Re: I.E 6

Martin Dougiamas - ން
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Over the past few months I've seen a couple of reports that may be related to this.

Sometimes it seemed to be related to people using Norton network security software that did strange things with cookies, but I'm still not sure.

If we can narrow down what this is then I might at least be able to provide some sort of workround or at least a warning message.

What do you mean by "just sit there" ... do you mean none of the links work at all, or that it gets stuck on the login screen?
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: I.E 6

Barry Bell - ން

I use the standard setting, and what I get is the title page Chess4us Online Education the login button the line below the tile and the correct background color. And that's all, so it finds the page but never competely loads it. I will immediately go to netscape or opera and load the site with no problem. I will try to refresh I.E. to correct the problem with no success, close I.E. and re-open no success however, I will come back to it and reload it in 10 15 mins and it will work fine. At first I thought it might be my connection but if I can connect with all other browsers this would not make sense. So it is either someting in I.E. 6 or something in moodle. Not sure yet, still tracking it.

I am using Norton 2002 anti virus on all of my computers.

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In reply to Barry Bell

Re: I.E 6

Martin Dougiamas - ން
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I use Mozilla most of the time. Occasionally I use IE 6 (when I want to use the richtext editor) and have never had a problem like that.

Moodle's HTML is standard meat and potatoes variety - nothing very fancy ... I'd be very surprised if it was anything to do with the web pages. It wouldn't be the first wierd IE bug though ...

If it happens again can you take a screenshot and post it here?
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: I.E 6

susan v - ން
People can't logon if they have Norton Firewall or Norton Internet Security, The links don't work at all, they are stuck.
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In reply to susan v

Re: I.E 6

Greg Barnett - ން
Norton appears to remove referer information from HTTP requests. If you change $CFG->buggy_referer to true, they can then log in.
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In reply to Greg Barnett

Re: I.E 6

Martin Dougiamas - ން
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>Norton appears to remove referer information from HTTP requests.

Ah! Brilliant! Mystery solved! Hopefully there's a switch in Norton's security product to turn this obnoxious behaviour off.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: I.E 6

Greg Barnett - ން
My preference would be to have Moodle not use referer checking as a security precaution.

Reasons:
1. It is trivial for a client to forge referer information.

2. By removing all referer checks, Moodle will probably get rid of a few bugs. I suspect that bug #289 is related to referer checking, but haven't confirmed that yet.

3. Moodle should not cause conflicts with security software (I typically turn off referer information when I'm using Opera) and settings that paying users/students prefer.

If moodle does continue to use referer checking, there should be code to handle cases where the browser doesn't send referer info. If I can figure out what exactly is going on with bug #289, I'll see what I can come up with.
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In reply to Greg Barnett

HTTP_REFERER

Martin Dougiamas - ން
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Yeah, those reasons make good sense. The security checking probably should just be off by default, with an option to turn it on. In the old days HTTP_REFERER used to be reliable but no longer it seems.

There are other places in the code that use HTTP_REFERER which also need to be looked at. I'll do a complete review sometime before the next release (bug 295).
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In reply to Barry Bell

Re: I.E 6

Thomas Bray - ން
I just had a user report that using IE 6.0 gives him an error message when he tries to REPLY to forums. Has anyone experience this before? Perhaps it's related?

Here is his description of the error:

"I get a page that has Your Reply at top. Then a box for subject and then below that a message box. In the message box, there is a message that says:Error you have entered a web address that does not exist on our site...."

BTW--moodle v 1.07

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In reply to Thomas Bray

Re: I.E 6

Barry Bell - ން

I tested your problem and was not able to get the same error however, I did get 4 similar errors.

It sort of reminds me of the old basic days when com routines were not exactly right and the program forgot or lost connection with the host. We used to call it loose code until they put a refresh of signal routine in the code or was it check connection routine I cant remember. But if you look at the error you will see it is trying to connect but for some reason runs into problems. I believe your user might have run into the same type of situation.

If the user hits the back button and starts it again I am sure it would connect just as I did in these tests.

Attachment error.jpg
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