[ic] Crazy Cross Compatibility Problems

[cfm@maine.com]

On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 07:22:55PM -0500, Mike Heins wrote:

> > SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown
> > 
...
> A good way to test this is to try accessing a regular page (not Interchange)
> repeatedly, i.e. one of the image files. If there are errors on those,
> then it has nothing at all to do with anything except problems between
> the web server and the browser. Usually Microsoft's buggy SSL implementation
> is at fault.
> 
> You might put this on the basket page:
> 
> 	If you have trouble ordering,
> 	<A HREF="https://www.myserver.com/regular_page.html">
> 	try this link
> 	</A> repeatedly.  If errors occur, when traveling
> 	this link and clicking Refresh/Reload several times,
> 	then you need to update your web browser.
> 
> The regular_page.html should be at least 16K bytes in size to give
> it a chance to fail.

I'm not sure if there is one or more issues here.  Certainly the
IE keepalive is a problem.  We do a **lot** of dynamic server side 
includes in *.html pages.  In our experience, *.cgi pages this is 
not a problem.  But a dynamic include in a *.html page does seem
to be a problem.  Sending CGI headers and PRAGMAs of whatever 
type does not work, IE just ignores them.

Ultimately we patched our server not to allow keepalive from IE.  
Particularly on larger pages with larger includes this is a problem.
For us, at least, the keepalive has been a much bigger issue than
any SSL problems.

cfm

-- 

Christopher F. Miller, Publisher                             cfm@maine.com
MaineStreet Communications, Inc         208 Portland Road, Gray, ME  04039
1.207.657.5078                                       http://www.maine.com/
Content management, electronic commerce, internet integration, Debian linux