I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox - The

Probably a year or so ago I asked on this list before and basically
the response was that this should be impossible that it shouldn't
happen... So I'm asking again hoping someone new to the list can
suggest something that might lead to a fix or that someone else has
run across the problem in the intervening time frame.

One of our products allows you to "mail merge" using an uploaded data
file and have the results emailed to the recipients. IE works fine,
always has. Firefox at some point started having the data "disappear"
halfway through the merge and now the most recent version of Safari
ALSO has the data disappear halfway through the merge. This means that
users of Macs don't really have any options where before at least we
could point them to Firefox. (Not our favorite option but at least it
worked)

Here's the process:

1. Menu of what type of merge you want to do. (Initialize working table)
2. Process Data File (Initialize working table and then load in new data)
3. Build Email
4. Send out Email

And by disappear I mean that when the end user gets to step 3 and hits
"preview with data" to see what their final email will look like our
program basically responds "No data in your merge table" OR the user
hits the Merge button and again it says "No records to merge..." I've
checked both using the app and by watching the underlying MySQL
tables...

I added a line to the Initialize function to email me every time it's
called (for debugging users) and I get 2 emails for IE users and 4
emails for Firefox. I USED to only get 2 emails from Safari uses but
with the latest version I get 4 now.

I've always been told it shouldn't matter what browser is being
used... but I have no other explanation of why it DOES matter... I've
tried disabling prefetching in Firefox (thinking MAYBE the browser was
prefetching the "bailout" link back to step 1 from step 3). The
initialize in step 1 fixed another problem we were having but I did
try disabling it temporarily to no avail.

Does anyone have any ideas on what could possibly be causing this?

Thanks!

Matt Neimeyer

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RE: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox - The impossible!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Neimeyer [mailto:matt@neimeyer.org]
> Sent: Monday, August 31, 2009 11:06 AM
> To: php-general
> Subject: [PHP] I'm not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox -
> The impossible!
>=20
> One of our products allows you to "mail merge" using an uploaded data
> file and have the results emailed to the recipients. IE works fine,
> always has. Firefox at some point started having the data "disappear"
> halfway through the merge and now the most recent version of Safari
> ALSO has the data disappear halfway through the merge. This means that
> users of Macs don't really have any options where before at least we
> could point them to Firefox. (Not our favorite option but at least it
> worked)
>=20
> Here's the process:
>=20
> 1. Menu of what type of merge you want to do. (Initialize working
> table)
> 2. Process Data File (Initialize working table and then load in new
> data)
> 3. Build Email
> 4. Send out Email
>=20
>=20
> Matt Neimeyer
>=20
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[Dewey Williams]

No answers - just more questions to maybe point you in a direction you
haven't been............
=20
Is it possible that the query/script is taking too long to build the
response page and FireFox/Safari is asking for an empty query result?

You mention MySQL but is there any JavaScript involved in the
data/result set. I am not a JS expert, but there could be differences
in IE/FF/Saf JavaScript that could cause this.

When you duplicate this with your data and get the error response, does
the script show a records in the response query, even though it reports
no records?

Sorry but no definitive answers...

Dewey Williams

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Re: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox - The

> No answers - just more questions to maybe point you in a direction you
> haven't been............

Anything is appreciated...

> Is it possible that the query/script is taking too long to build the
> response page and FireFox/Safari is asking for an empty query result?

I don't think so... the tracer emails I get from the initialize
function are usually a couple seconds apart. It's almost like the
browser is trying to make two "simultanious" requests which is why I
was thinking maybe prefetching...

> You mention MySQL but is there any JavaScript involved in the
> data/result set. =A0I am not a JS expert, but there could be differences
> in IE/FF/Saf JavaScript that could cause this.

The only javascript is from the upload screen a popup window is
created that says "wait patiently please" and then on the next screen
a javascript that closes that popup window. (The email editor is
javascript heavy but the data is already gone by the time you get to
that point. And the only reason the popup exists is because the email
editor requires popups and we have impatient users...)

> When you duplicate this with your data and get the error response, does
> the script show a records in the response query, even though it reports
> no records?

No. By the time the editor screen loads the data really IS gone. If I
sit in a mysql session and keep refreshing the table I see data...
data... data... data... no data... I only mentioned the error
responses as a way (not phrased the best) to indicate that it didn't
see any correlation to "this" branch of code or "that" branch of code
(for example if I could narrow it down to "it disappears when I
preview" then I would know to look at the preview pages)

> Sorry but no definitive answers...

Thanks though... the reason I keep pounding my head on the desk is
that we deliberatly try to keep all the processing on the server side
to avoid cross-browser and cross-platform issues. So sure... maybe a
style sheet breaks... maybe a minor javascript doesn't work quite
right... maybe the font sizes change and things are out of
alignment... but the heavy lifting happens behind the scenes where
"they" don't need to worry about it. Not very Web 2.0 but it's been
steady (with this exception) so far.

Thanks!

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Re: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox -The impossible!

Matt Neimeyer wrote:
>> No answers - just more questions to maybe point you in a direction you
>> haven't been............
>
> Anything is appreciated...
>
>> Is it possible that the query/script is taking too long to build the
>> response page and FireFox/Safari is asking for an empty query result?
>
> I don't think so... the tracer emails I get from the initialize
> function are usually a couple seconds apart. It's almost like the
> browser is trying to make two "simultanious" requests which is why I
> was thinking maybe prefetching...

If it were prefetching, or another request clobbering your current
request then you would see a second hit in your server logs.

Cheers,
Rob.
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Application and Templating Framework for PHP

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Re: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox - The

> If it were prefetching, or another request clobbering your current request
> then you would see a second hit in your server logs.

I will admit... I have made (at least) one assumption... Since...

1. This is a difference between IE and Firefox/Safari...
2. I was seeing a tracer email for each hit to the Initialize function...

I have been assuming that it is the browser that has been the cause.
I'm 90% certain that last year we DID check and we DID see multiple
web hits... That said I will make an explicit check and see if there
are multiple hits in the web server logs now for the Safari as well.

Matt

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Re: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox -

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 11:55:38AM -0400, Matt Neimeyer wrote:

> > If it were prefetching, or another request clobbering your current request
> > then you would see a second hit in your server logs.
>
> I will admit... I have made (at least) one assumption... Since...
>
> 1. This is a difference between IE and Firefox/Safari...
> 2. I was seeing a tracer email for each hit to the Initialize function...
>
> I have been assuming that it is the browser that has been the cause.
> I'm 90% certain that last year we DID check and we DID see multiple
> web hits... That said I will make an explicit check and see if there
> are multiple hits in the web server logs now for the Safari as well.

I do something like what you're doing. I process customer mailing lists
into a format which can be used by my Windows mail processing program.
Since I had all this infrastructure already built in Perl/Python/C,
etc., I use system() calls to execute the code and use PHP to stitch the
pieces together. Thus, I have no problems. This could be an alternative
for you, but I don't know enough about your internals to say.

In circumstances like this, I would "instrument" the code with
echo/print statements all around where you think the problem is. Echo
variables which should be a certain thing, arrays which should exist,
etc. I know, this is probably a blindingly obvious approach, but I've
had circumstances like this, where the problem is completely bizarre and
elusive. And that's how I ultimately solved it (or worked around it).

As with other responders, I have to say that if you're doing the
processing on the server, it doesn't make any sense.

Um... one other wild possibility I almost hate to mention. I don't
recall if you mentioned whether your server was running Windows or not.
But I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to barf under certain circumstances
if the user agent (browser) isn't IE. If it was engineered to happen
only under edge cases, most users would never notice. It may seem
paranoid, but Microsoft has done things like this numerous times before.
If you are running Windows on the server, try exporting the installation
to a Linux server and see if you have the same problem.

Paul

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Re: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox - The

> In circumstances like this, I would "instrument" the code with
> echo/print statements all around where you think the problem is.

We did that with no luck. We only saw one call to the initialize
function which is why I switched to tracer emails because we "knew"
the initialize function was "the only possible explanation" but
couldn't prove it based on any output to the browser.

> As with other responders, I have to say that if you're doing the
> processing on the server, it doesn't make any sense.

> Um... one other wild possibility I almost hate to mention. I don't
> recall if you mentioned whether your server was running Windows or not.

I did not mention... Sorry... according to phpinfo() it's PHP 5.2.5 on
Apache/2.0.52 on CentOS under Plesk 8.2.0. SELECT version() on MySQL
reports 4.1.20-log. The MySQL API version in phpinfo() is 4.1.20. If
it matters from what I can tell the entire "toolchain" is 64-bit (for
example the php configure command reports
--build=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)

> But I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to barf under certain circumstances
> if the user agent (browser) isn't IE.

Neither would I... but unless I have to for some other reason I prefer
PHP 5+, MySQL 5+, Apache 2+ and a *nix of some flavor for my web
serving needs.

Matt

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Re: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox - The

> 1. Menu of what type of merge you want to do. (Initialize working table)
> 2. Process Data File (Initialize working table and then load in new data)
> 3. Build Email
> 4. Send out Email

How many PHP scripts correspond to these 4 steps? Is it one script (or
more) for each step? For example:

step1.php
step2.php
step3.php
step4.php

Or is it just one "dispatcher" script:

index.php?step=1
index.php?step=2
[etc.]

Or something in-between?

Also, have you had a chance to get more information yet from your web
access logs?

Finally, have you reproduced the problem while watching the network
activity using something like tcpdump or Firebug's "Net" tab?

Ben

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Re: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox - The

> How many PHP scripts correspond to these 4 steps? Is it one script (or
> more) for each step? For example:
> Or is it just one "dispatcher" script:
> Or something in-between?

It's a dispatcher script that can call multiple files. For example
(without pulling up code)... (each dispatch job would be a hit to the
webserver)

1. dispatch job = Start (select upload or existing file)
2. dispatch job = Load
If uploaded file then include upload processor and set source file
= uploaded file
else if existing file then source file = existing file
include process_file to parse source file
if usable records include display_records
else include display_norecords
3. (from display records, user can checkbox select what records)
4. dispatch job = use these records
include template editor
5. (user edits template, clicks merge)
6. dispatch job = process template and send merged emails

> Also, have you had a chance to get more information yet from your web
> access logs?

If I'm reading it right I see the dispatcher being called with the
file name to upload and then a second later I see another call to the
dispatcher with a referrer of itself.

So far... I can reliably reproduce the problem in Firefox on Windows
and Mac, Safari on Windows and Mac. But Chrome and IE appear to be
unaffected.

> Finally, have you reproduced the problem while watching the network
> activity using something like tcpdump or Firebug's "Net" tab?

While I'm familiar with the concepts... :) I have not... this is the
first problem I've had which could not be directly traced to
problematic code (php syntax or logic errors, mysql query errors,
problems with database optimizations, etc)

Matt

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RE: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox - The impossible!

From: Matt Neimeyer

> So far... I can reliably reproduce the problem in Firefox on Windows
> and Mac, Safari on Windows and Mac. But Chrome and IE appear to be
> unaffected.
>=20
>> Finally, have you reproduced the problem while watching the network
>> activity using something like tcpdump or Firebug's "Net" tab?
>=20
> While I'm familiar with the concepts... :) I have not... this is the
> first problem I've had which could not be directly traced to
> problematic code (php syntax or logic errors, mysql query errors,
> problems with database optimizations, etc)

I would set up Wireshark to capture and compare the http sequences from
each browser. After you capture each stream, use the "Follow TCP Stream"
option to look at the raw HTTP. If it is the browsers, there should be
some obvious differences in the sequence of requests from them.

Bob McConnell

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Re: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox - The

> I would set up Wireshark to capture and compare the http sequences from
> each browser. After you capture each stream, use the "Follow TCP Stream"
> option to look at the raw HTTP. If it is the browsers, there should be
> some obvious differences in the sequence of requests from them.

This is a good idea, although the Net panel in Firebug would be a very
quick preliminary step to this more systematic approach. And it might
be all you need.

Firebug will parse out the HTTP very nicely for you and the best of it
is that you can watch the requests as the browser sends them, without
even looking aside to another window.

Ben

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Re: I"m not crazy I swear it... IE vs Safari and Firefox -The impossible!

>Does anyone have any ideas on what could possibly be causing this?

Matt:

The first thing I would do is to validate the web portion of your
application. In other words do your forms, as well as the rest of the
web pages, validate? I've seen instances where people build projects
around IE when that's not the browser you should be using as a
foundation, but rather accommodating its shortcomings after you get
your project working correctly.

The second thing would be to check your javascript for errors. Oddly
enough, I would use FF (Fire Bug) for that.

You could post a url for us to look at as well.

Cheers,

tedd

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