AOL browser problems with ASP.NET objects and/or viewstate.

[SwapNetWbmstr]

I am programming for an interactive matchmaking site consisting of more than 80 pages that was originally ASP, but is now ASP.NET 1.1. We want to upgrade to 2.0 but it won't go quietly, lol, due to many amatuer mistakes made by me and the boss early on in the conversion to .NET. We were learning on the fly.

Currently, I am trying to bring the pages up to 2.0 standards and doing some polishing along the way. I have about a dozen pages complete and active and now, unfortunately, I am receiving some frustrating feedback on performance with AOL browsers. These are mainly search-type pages in which there are filters - all .NET objects now - that allow the user to narrow the results.

The problem is this: when an AOL user attempts to utilize some of these pages, the initial page load is fine. However, as soon as they try to use a dropdown filter or click "Next" or "Prev" page, they get a blank white page with 4 or 5 random characters. A view source reveals only the opening HTML tag and maybe a few others.

I thought the problem was the size of the viewstate because I forgot to set the returned results veiwstate equal to false. I have now done this on my development site, but not on the live site. However, when I broke down and downloaded AOL 9.0 VR, I could not duplicate the problem when I accessed the live site. To further confuse the issue, I accessed the dev site - the one in which I switched off the viewstate on the results - and I am now getting the broken page. There is no error displayed, just a failure to load the page. It only happens to AOL users and only on the new, completely .NET pages on the site.

Thanks for any suggestions you may have.
~Dan

 

[rac2]

Try the ASP.NET forum

http://www.tek-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=855

.

Or Google AOL browser compatibility .NET

 

[SwapNetWbmstr]

Sorry, this is new for me, but do you mean I overlooked an answer there or this topic should be posted there? I did try many Google combinations similar to the one you suggested but came up empty. I'll try your exact phrasing to see if that works.

Thanks,
~Dan

 

[stevexff]

Dan

I think he means you'll probably have more luck posting this on the ASP.NET forum. This one is for more generalised design issues and questions.

BTW, it's not a performance problem, it's broken. Have a try with some other browsers to see if your compatibility issue is more widespread (Firefox also has a debugger, I think, which might help...)

Steve

[small]"Every program can be reduced by one instruction, and every program has at least one bug. Therefore, any program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work." (Object:erlDesignPatterns)[/small]

 

[SwapNetWbmstr]

Well, it appears the problem may have been inadvertantly solved. IT did the latest round of updates for Server 2003 and "Abracadabra!" it works now.

They were in the middle of doing the updates and hadn't gotten to the development server when I was testing there. This is why it worked on the live site and not the dev site. After they finished with the dev server, the error was gone.

Thanks for the input.
~Dan