Inconsistent GWT behavior in IE 8

Question

All,

I have a web site that's built with GWT at https://penwag.com/penwag/. If you just hit the site and see the main page, there's supposed to be a login/registration area that displays, along with a teaser for the site. I've tried the site with most of the main browsers - FF 3 & 3.5, IE 6 & 8, Safari, and Chrome, and all appears well to me.

However, I have a non-geek user that has visited the site from both work and home. The work computer can see the intro page fine, but the home computer shows only the static content, and non of the javascript-based portion, that is the login/registration and teaser. Both computers are using IE 8. He checked the computer where the site fails, and scripting is enabled.

Can anyone else see the problem? (You don't have to register to see the problem, just hit the main page.) Anything else I should check or have him try?

Thanks!

Edit:

The site is implemented using GWT 1.7.0.

I'll have to find out about the OS versions.

Edit:

The one that works is running Windows XT, the failing one is running Windows Vista. (There's a shocker!) I myself have viewed it successfully with both OSs.

Edit:

I've since completely re-structured the site, and documented the changes here:

http://penwag.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-penwag-update.html

So, the site is no longer the same as when I asked this question.

Answer 1

I am running IE 8 on Windows XP SP3 and I do receive an error when trying to access your page linked above.

To try and pinpoint where in your code the problem is happening, you could try compiling your GWT application using the PRETTY or DETAILED style flag.

code.google.com/webtoolkit/doc/1.6/FAQ_DebuggingAndCompiling.html#Why_is_my_GWT-generated_JavaScript_gibberish?

Error:

Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.2)
Timestamp: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:13:32 UTC


Message: Exception thrown and not caught
Line: 1430
Char: 182
Code: 0
URI: https: //penwag.com/home/06C3015B261A5DD1F637E9F95A5AF26C.cache.html  

I am also experiencing a similar problem when trying to load a GWT application that I've been working on (works fine on Firefox and works fine on other installations of IE 8). The error with my GWT app loading in IE 8 seems to happen when it tries to make its first RPC call to the server. Uninstalling and reinstalling IE 8 (and Service Pack 3) have not been successful in resolving this.

Update:
After debugging the javascript running in my instance of IE 8, i was able to track down a solution to this problem. GWT 1.7.0 has a known issue (issue 3927, issue 4163) where GWT RPC calls will fail in IE 8 if the native XMLHTTP support is disabled. This setting can be found at the following location:

Tools->Internet Options->Advanced->Security->Enable native XMLHTTP support

Answer 2

There are a lot of possibilites what can cause such a problem.

At first force your user to refresh cache in IE:) There are a lot of cases when you have updated your application, but users are still using the old version because of cache.

If doesn't help, you have to make sure that user doesn't see any errors. Those can be cause by a lot of things, such as different locale, default language and etc. By default, when an error happens in IE, a warning sign is displayed in left bottom corner. Ask your user for a screenshot, to check if such error is present, and then ask him to send you this error. This might help.

At last ask the user to launch IE in no-extensions mode. If your site works fine in this mode, it means that some extension have broken the functionality of your site.

Answer 3

Try using latest GWT build 1.7.0, according to relase notes:

• Updated GWT libraries to support IE8

I tried with IE 8 (version 8.0.7100.0, running on Windows 7 RC) and page renders fine.