php, coldfusion and general web development waffle

luke · Post by **luke** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 7:57 am

this isn't about php, but this thread kinda went into xampp territory so i thought i'd post this

i've just spent hours messing about with this site wondering what i'd done wrong - and it turns out i've done nothing wrong, but for whatever reason internet explorer displays the page weird ( the header and footer positioning is out ) if i access it through xampp with 127.0.0.1 but not through localhost/ ( or c:\dir\file ) !!

see the pics, exactly the same file - just accessed in different ways. all ways work fine in all browsers, except ie when accessed through xampp with 127.0.0.1

you can see the logo and title moves position!

accessed through c:\directory\file.html

accessed through localhost/directory/file

accessed through 127.0.0.1/directory/file

as you can see, when accessed through 127.0.0.1 it displays the header all out of place. it does the same with the footer - which it starts displaying halfway across the screen. but only when accessed through 127.0.0.1!

fucking hours i spent trying to work this out, going through css line by line trying to see what i'd changed that messed the positioning in ie

Post by **faceless** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 1:59 pm

I'm guessing it's something to do with the resolution. But I'm not sure

luke · Post by **luke** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 2:37 pm

i don't think its anything to do with resolution, if it was then when i access the file through c:\dir\file or https://localhost/dir/file it would have the same problem - its only when i access it through https://127.0.0.1 that the problem happens

but the code is identical - its loading exactly the same files, the resolution is identical - the only thing that changes is how it was accessed

i posted on the xampp forum, but no one has been able to answer

its crazy, because looking at it you'd think its the css, you've positioned it wrong

luke · Post by **luke** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:21 pm

i've found out what the problem is ... sort of

its something called microsoft compatibility view - for whatever reason it was turned on when visiting sites on https://127.0.0.1 ( and strangely couchtripper.com is the only other site listed to display in compatibility view! )

https://localhost displays without this compatibility view nonsense. if i turn off compatibly view for 127.0.0.1, it works fine

but this causes another problem, why does the site display weird in compatibility view? what is compatibility view?! i'd never heard of it. loads of people still use ie, and if they're visiting the site in compatibility view, its going to display weird

i best check all my other sites to see if they cause any problems ...

Post by **faceless** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:29 pm

that's strange that this site does that - but it might explain a few weird formatting errors I've had over the years.

luke · Post by **luke** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:43 pm

theres not actually much difference viewing couchtripper in the two different modes - theres differences but they're small. the left and right column widths are different, the spacing between the featured threads is different - but nothing mad like i'm getting

compatibility view

normal

mind you, either view is shocking when you compare that page on any other ( decent ) browser! i wonder why the middle column is so random on ie

major.tom · Post by **major.tom** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 1:41 am

This is probably another case of M$ marketing dept at work. It's probably meant to be compatible with older versions of ie, so should correctly be called incompatibility view. (ie is well known to be quite incompatible with established web standards; perhaps less so now than previously)

luke · Post by **luke** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:10 pm

i found if you add this meta tag to the header;

meta https-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE8"/

it'll force ie to not use compatibility mode. but my worry now is if ie7 or before ( which won't recognise that meta tag ) will display the site weird ... it shouldn't, i mean the code to position the page elements are nothing complex, and i've used similar code for years, and don't remember having such trouble before. but if thats the case, why would compatibility mode position things so weirdly?

the likelihood of finding someone with ie7 or before to test is remote though! fuck 'um - if they're still using ie7 or earlier, its their own fault!

Post by **faceless** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:06 pm

haha yeah, too right - but that's good you found an answer. I'll keep it in mind next time I'm doing something

luke · Post by **luke** » Fri Aug 10, 2012 2:08 pm

my hosting company is stopping its windows coldfusion hosting, but offering linux based coldfusion instead. i think a few of you have experience of linux, is there anything i should take into consideration when moving sites from windows to linux?

the only thing i can think of is isn't linux case sensitive? and does that go for values passed along, like page.cfm?value=hello, or from a submitted form? would it recognise page.cfm?Value=hello ? or is it just filenames that are case sensitive?

i'd like to stay with this hosting company if i can, cos they are really cheap and we make some nice profit on the hosting!

Post by **faceless** » Fri Aug 10, 2012 3:26 pm

I've never used linux at all, so this post is irrelevant!

But why are they stopping hosting it? Licence costs or security?

luke · Post by **luke** » Fri Aug 10, 2012 4:01 pm

from their email i wasn't entirely sure, but i've been chatting to a guy who seems to be the cause of their decision. he raised some issues with them and reckons they're using a standard version of coldfusion instead of an enterprise version. the standard version on a windows shared hosting platform can have some security issues apparently, and for them to have the enterprise version on windows they need some special agreement or something with adobe. they're denying this, and saying there isn't any security issues, but it seems a bit of a coincidence to me that he raises these issues and then they suddenly decide to stop their windows coldfusion hosting.

i don't really understand it all to be honest, i mean, i use it to code, but i don't really know whats going on behind the scenes. the only time i use the administrator is to set up a database or when i've got a problem and need to turn the debugging on!

i didn't even know there was a standard and enterprise edition!

major.tom · Post by **major.tom** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 5:31 am

luke wrote:my hosting company is stopping its windows coldfusion hosting, but offering linux based coldfusion instead. i think a few of you have experience of linux, is there anything i should take into consideration when moving sites from windows to linux?

the only thing i can think of is isn't linux case sensitive? and does that go for values passed along, like page.cfm?value=hello, or from a submitted form? would it recognise page.cfm?Value=hello ? or is it just filenames that are case sensitive?

i'd like to stay with this hosting company if i can, cos they are really cheap and we make some nice profit on the hosting!

Hey Luke.

The 1st big thing would be that *nix (unix/linux) and windows save text files differently. I would highly recommend using a good editor like Notepad++ which allows you to quickly see which format is being used and switch between them. I also recommend you start saving your web page files (html, css, etc) in the *nix format. (They appear virtually the same in your editor, but can be "read" differently by different o/s's, often with adverse results.)

Another thing to consider is that where windows directories are usually typed with backslashes (eg. c:\windows) *nix uses forward slashes. So if you have any references to other files, you'll want to switch those. And spaces in file names are generally a bad idea. If you simply must, you'll need to "escape" the space character as follows: "don't\ use\ spaces.css"

The final thing is file ownership & permissions. Rather than my going into a long-winded explanation, how will you be updating content for your site? Will they give you ftp access and/or ssh? (ie. simple file transfers and/or interactive access to the host system)

luke · Post by **luke** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 4:47 pm

thanks major

i use textpad for my editing, have done since '97 - its great editor. i just checked and it gives you options to save as pc, mac or unix, and then as ansi, dos, utf-8, unicode or unicode ( big endian ) - but i don't see any *nix format. i'll have a look at that notepad++, i got a few months before they switch so i've got time to have a play about.

the directory thing will mean i'll have to make changes, like when a visitor uploads a file through a site ( an image or whatever ), i use windows style directories when saving or editing any files, so they will all need to be changed. i never include spaces in any file names or directories, and i always strip them out of file names for things that get uploaded.

i update sites using ftp, but there is some big admin system that lets you update files, but i've never used it. the only other way things get uploaded is if a user ( or admin user ) uploads a file through the site. like i'm working on a site now and they can upload excel and pdf files through the site, then i just save them wherever on the server.

was i wrong about things being case sensitive?

the last time i used unix was '92, i learnt cobol and pascal on unix! waste of time that was, i'm sure business stopped using those two about 10 years earlier!

major.tom · Post by **major.tom** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 12:41 am

No, you're right about unix/linux being case-sensitive. It also sounds like textpad will suit your needs. I used "*nix" (wildcard-nix) to mean either unix or linux because I didn't want to say that the two were the same; just similar. But I'm sure that when textpad says "unix" format, that's what you want to use.