I recently received feedback from people saying that some web sites I had worked on were loading slowly and freezing for a second or two in Internet Explorer on each page load.

After checking that images were well optimised I guessed the next thing to check should be any JavaScript the pages were loading.

I removed all JavaScript includes and the pages loaded fine so I added them in again until I was able to re-create the ‘hanging’ issue – FancyBox seemed to be the culprit.

I’ve not yet figured out why, but the hang appears to happen around the same time that the HTML DOM structure finishes loading. During the ‘freeze’ the browser hangs completely and you cannot click any links, scroll, or interact with the page in any way.

The hang even happens when viewing the FancyBox web site in IE although is it for a much shorter period of time – maybe the duration of the hand is influence but the amount of HTML or links on a page?

As I don’t have enough time to investigate further, for the moment I shall continue to use jQuery lightBox or one of the other image popup scripts. Shame, as FancyBox is the nicest and cleanest I have found so far.

If you have a Flash site which loads dynamically generated XML file using SSL, you may have experienced this problem.

Loading XML files in Flash over an SSL Connection fails in Internet Explorer if the Pragma:no-cache or Cache-control:no-cache HTTP headers are set on the XML file. By default, all dynamically generated files are returned by the server with the Pragma:no-cache header so that they are not cached by the browser.

To ensure that Flash loads the XML successfully, you should use the following function in PHP near the top of your code:

session_cache_limiter('private_no_expire');

Recently I stumbled across the annoying IE/Win bug of gaps between vertically stacked list items.

After searching around for a while I found a fair few fixes. However, none of these seemed to work for me. The only different I could find was that my list contained images where the other examples were purely text.

I fixed the bug by chance whilst implementing a fix by John Serris at www.phonophunk.com.

It turned out that when using the “vertical-align: bottom” fix applied to the list item tag, I also needed to apply it to the ‘a’ and ‘img’ tags as well:

#navsec a, #navsec img { vertical-align:bottom; }

Internet Explorer (IE) 7.x (Windows):

1. Under the Tools menu at the top of your browser, select Internet Options.
2. Click the General tab.
3. In the Browsing History section of the General tab, click the Delete button.
4. Under Temporary Internet Files, select the “Delete Files…” button.
5. A dialog box will appear that says, “Are you sure you want to delete all temporary Internet Explorer files?” Click the Yes button.
6. In the History section of the General tab, click the Clear History button. A dialog box will appear that says, “Are you sure you want Windows to delete your history of visited Web sites?”?
7. Click the YES button.
8. Click close to leave the Browsing History section.
9. Click OK to leave Internet Options.
10. Click the Refresh button at the top of the browser

Internet Explorer (IE) 6.x (Windows):

1. Under the Tools menu at the top of your browser, select Internet Options.
2. Click the General tab.
3. In the Temporary Internet files section of the General tab, click the Delete files button.
4. A dialog box will appear that says, “Delete all files in the Temporary Internet Files folder?”? Click the OK button.
5. In the History section of the General tab, click the Clear History button. A dialog box will appear that says, “Are you sure you want Windows to delete your history of visited Web sites?”?
6. Click the YES button.
7. Click OK to leave Internet Options.
8. Click the Refresh button at the top of the browser

Internet Explorer (IE) 5.x (Windows):

1. From the Tools drop-down menu at the top of the browser, select Internet Options.
2. Click the General tab at the top of the Internet Options dialog box.
3. In the Temporary Internet files section of the General tab, click the Delete files button.
4. A dialog box will appear that says, “Delete all files in the Temporary Internet Files folder?”? Click the OK button.
5. In the History section of the General tab, click the Clear History button.
6. A dialog box will appear that says, “Delete all files from your History folder?”? Click the OK button.
7. Click OK to leave Internet Options.
8. Click the Refresh button at the top of the browser. (This button is to the right of the Stop button.)

Tip: If you have stored web pages for offline viewing, check “Delete all offline content”?

Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 4.x and 5.x (Mac):

1. From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.
2. Click the arrow next to Web Browser to expand the menu, then choose Advanced.
3. In the Cache section of the window, click Empty Now.
4. Click OK to leave Preferences.

Internet Explorer (IE) 4.x (Windows):

1. From the View drop-down menu at the top of the browser, select Internet Options.
2. Click the General tab at the top of the Internet Options dialog box.
   In the Temporary Internet files section of the General tab, click the Delete files button.
3. A dialog box will appear that says, “Delete all files in the Temporary Internet Files folder?”? Click the OK button.
4. In the History section of the General tab, click the Clear History button.
5. A dialog box will appear that says, “Delete all files from your History folder?”? Click the Yes button.
6. Click OK to leave Internet Options.
7. Click the Refresh button at the top of the browser. (This button is to the right of the Stop button.)

Tip: If you have Explorer 4.x Active Channel subscriptions, check “Delete all subscription content”? to delete cached channel content as well.

Internet Explorer (IE) 3.x:

1. Select “View > Options”? from the main menu
2. Change to the “Advanced”? tab
3. Click on “Settings”? button
4. Click on “Empty Folder”

Tip: If you’re running out of hard disk space, you could reduce percent of disk space used by Explorer 3.x for its cache by sliding the “Amount of disk space to use”? guage.

Tip: Although it’s not required by all browsers, it is a good idea to restart your browser after clearing the cache. If you’re using Internet Explorer it’s sometimes better to restart your computer as well.

For information on how to clear your browser’s cache, please refer to the links at the bottom of this post.

Your browser cache consists of items you have seen, heard, or downloaded from the Web, including images, sounds and Web pages. Storing these files in your cache can make browsing the Web faster because your computer will be able to display cached items more quicklyas it won’t have to download them again from the Internet.

All the files stored in your cache take up disk space, so from time to time, you may want to clear out the files stored in your cache to free up some space on your computer.

Also, you may find that if you visit a web site has been recently updated and a previous version of this page exists in your cache, your computer may display the page in your cache. Therefore you will be viewing out-of-date information – clearing your browser’s cache should fix this problem.

• Clearing Netcape Browser Cache
• Clearing Internet Explorer Cache
• Clearing AOL Browser Cache
• Clearing Opera Browser Cache
• Clearing Mozilla Browser Cache