OT: Mozilla .9.9 (Linux)

[Ryszard]

I know this is off topic, however has a (tenuous) link to perl.

I've built a site in perl which is dynamically created, and has lots of tables, rows, and table data. It *used* to work in previous version of Mozilla (0.9.2 (the default RH 7.2 build)), but since i've upgraded there seems to be a problem displaying content I generate from a postgres database.

Netscape (4.78) renders everything as it should be. Nothing to do with the database, or the scripts has changed since i've upgrade Mozilla.

Obviously there is something I'm missing here, so I was wondering if any other monks out there have had similar problems. Or indeed can anyone point me in a direction where my question might be answered.

[Matts]

Doesn't help if we can't see the data. Post a link to it so we can check it.

Alternatively, try running it through the W3C's validator - it will most likely tell you what's wrong.

[metadoktor]

Unfortunately, you have run into a common problem with browsers which is that they all don't do the same thing the same way. Some suggestions follow:

1. You may be generating perfectly valid HTML but the eccentricities of the specific browser make it so that it can't build the page the same way or at all. You may have to live with the results on the browser that works unless you want to proceed with the next step.

2. Read the bugs list that comes with each browser and see if one of the issues could be affecting you.

3. If you want to fix this by making your HTML come out the same way across all browsers (or just Mozilla/Netscape) then I would suggest reducing your HTML output to the simplest and see how it builds (or breaks) in each browser (Note: that I've had severe problems with generating huge tables in Netscape so you may have to try the large as well as the small).

Some informative links:

W3 HTML Validator

Validation Tools

Browser Comparison Chart

metadoktor

"The doktor is in."

[thraxil]

there's really not much anyone here can do to help besides pointing you at the mozilla release page and bugzilla unless you post some code.

having it inaccessible (private or offline) or too large to post is a poor excuse. if you can't debug something, you should always reduce it to a minimal test case. make a copy of the codebase and start removing parts of the code, testing each time. each time you remove a piece, if the error is still reproduced, leave that piece out. if it makes the error go away, put it back in and start taking out other pieces. the goal is to eliminate every possible variable until you wind up with a tiny piece of code by changing one or two lines you can either reproduce the error or not. then post that if it hasn't become obvious where the problem is (99% of the time it will).

i don't mean to be too rough but i'm constantly amazed at how few people seem to be able to grasp this basic strategy. there's no magic secret to debugging code; you just have to go through it systematically and painstakingly. debuggers and logging (print statements or otherwise) can help but nothing i've found works as well as reducing it to a minimal test case.

anders pearson

[archen]

You might also consider searching for similar results on Bugzilla to see if it's just an outstanding bug with the browser. Some things are still not working right in Moz (I still can't seem to get Content-disposition to work right with CGI). Chances are if you're just putting data in a simple html table - that you're html is incorrect (non standard).

[Ryszard]

Ok a late followup.

In short my problem was bad html.

In length
My web application is a cgi::app, html::template app. My main page consists of a table with two "frames". I take the user input, build some HTML and param(VAR=>$output).

My problem with this approach was $output consisted of another <table> in which I was appending some other html to.

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>
      some html here
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>
this is some more html here

So, when the above block was inserted into my main template page (inside another table) mozilla .9.9 (and IE) would not render "this is some more html here".

After I fixed the HTML it all rendered correctly.

What have i learnt? test, test, and test, build your html correctly, and Mozilla 0.9.2 doesnt render HTML "properly".