After hearing people rave about the Mozilla browser, I downloaded, installed, and used it for a few weeks. Now, however, for some reason it can’t find some sites, insists that “the document contains no data” on other sites, and flat out refuses to show me images. I can get to the same sites in IE, and the images show…so what’s going on?
For the record, the sites I’ve had problems with most recently are http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/comics.htm , http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/game/20051.html (some of the FAQs won’t open under the Mozilla browser, and most of them are simple text files), opening a folder in Hotmail (junk mail or inbox), and several adult webcomics. Now, I could understand, maybe, if I was only having problems with Keenspot/Keenspace comics, but I’m not.
What’s the matter and how can I fix this? Please keep in mind that I am not a computer tech. I’m not afraid to poke around in the “Tools” file, but I won’t change the settings unless I know what I’m doing.
Are you using the full Mozilla package (includes email, HTML editor)? I, too, once used the full version and I found that the slow response time would sometimes cause sites to “time out” and cause other problems, i.e. your image situation.
I recommend using the Firefox browser, which is based on the Mozilla program but is a much more scaled down version - its just the browser, no email program or other extraneous stuff. You can download it at http://texturizer.net/firefox/download.html
You might still run into websites that aren’t properly coded for the Mozilla/Netscape browser engine, but they seem to be few and far between. I was able to view your second link, the FAQ, with no problem, but the first link keeps timing out on me. I tried opening the link with IE and got a 404 error, so I think that site may have its own issues.
For the sites that are strictly IE based - some webmail sites, mostly - there is an add-on for Firefox that allows you to right click a link and choose “Open in IE”.
Keep us updated!
Here’s the raw html for anyone who speaks the webcode stuff (I hate mucking around in it, but it looks to my uneducated eye as if it’s specifically hardcoded to only play nicely with a handful of named browsers/platforms, not including Mozilla. The browser I sicced on it cheats, and lies to servers claiming it is Internet Explorer, in case you’re wondering):
Not to case aspersions on your cultural refinement or anything, but after glimpsing what’s available on kingfeatures I have to say your mental and spiritual health can only grow from being denied access to their offerings.
I tried going to the same sites in IE immediately after Mozilla couldn’t find the files, or refused to show the image. When I got the image placeholder, I DID rightclick and select “View Image” and reload, but I still got the placeholder.
The thing is, until a couple of days ago, I COULD get these sites or images using Mozilla.
As for my mental and spiritual health, that’s between me and my shrink. Besides, I only read Mutts, On the Fasttrack, Pardon My Planet, Six Chicks, and Tumbleweeds from that site. It’s not like I read Beetle Bailey or Tina’s Groove. I get some of the other good comics like Piranha Club in my daily newspaper.
I’m using the full Mozilla 1.6 suite, and I downloaded it just a couple of weeks ago, so it should be the most recent. I do not have Options under Tools. I have an image manager, but fiddling with that doesn’t seem to have any effect.
Again, the problem is that I’ve BEEN opening these images and files daily with Mozilla until a couple of days ago. It’s very frustratiing.
Well, if you didn’t download a new version of Mozilla in the last couple of days, and if you didn’t change your security & privacy settings in Mozilla, then the change must have been on the website that you’re trying to access. So ask them.
I have some comics websites that I had to add to my Mozilla list of sites that are allowed to do popups. And one of these had been working, but then they changed the code they used to do popup windows, and then I had to add the site to the list before it would work again.
I occasionally get the “document contains no data” message. Generally comes because the site in question happened to be overloaded at that instant, and responds too slow, so Mozilla thinks it’s a dead link. (I’d mention a certain message board that is frequently very slow, but I don’t want to blame our hard working administrators like you.)
Lynn, I think something has changed recently on the KingFeatures site. I also read a number of comics there, and within the last week the actual comics have stopped loading in Firefox, even though everything else on the page loads just fine. I don’t even see the placeholder lately, though it does appear from time to time.
Meanwhile, the same site loads properly in Apple’s Safari browser and every other non-Mozilla browser I have (and I have several).
I have noticed that KingFeatures has some kind of strange protection scheme going on. I’ve never been able to save one of their comics to hard disk, and they stop me from even viewing the image by itself in a new window. In other words, they don’t allow direct access to the images - the comic will only display within its designated HTML page.
This all leads me to suspect that they may be using some proprietary new protection scheme that doesn’t work with Mozilla-based browsers. I would say that they’re shooting themselves in the foot with their paranoia about protecting the images, but then, they’re just another example of corporate wonks who assume that everybody who’s anybody is going to be surfing with MSIE on Windows, and to hell with everybody else.
I’ve just looked at the King Features site with Firefox 0.9.1 and every strip Lynn said she reads displays fine unless I check the ‘for the originating Web site only’ box.
I just unchecked the box in question, and that did the trick. Try it, Lynn!
Thanks y’all. So it wasn’t a conspiracy after all
I still think KingFeatures must have changed something, though. I’m sure I checked that box two or three months ago, when I first installed Firefox, yet KingFeatures worked properly until just the last week or so.