Is this Possible??

I am having an argument with a server administrator who refuses to consider this problem.

People using internet explorer on the mac are getting different code than people using other browsers/other platforms. I know browsers display the same code differently but this is a case where the html is different. The code being displayed on IE/Mac is a week old.
There are no browser detects on the site.

This has been confirmed with 4 people using 4 different ISPs. These people have never visited the site before so I do not think there is browser cacheing.
We all dumped our cache, refreshed our browsers before visiting.

My question:
Is it possible in a virtual hosting situation for old code to be floating around somewhere on the server? Is there any server cacheing? etc.
How could it be possible?

I have never seen anything like this in my 6 years in the business but I also do not deny what I see.

Thanks

That *could* happen if hosting has several copies of your info on several boxes, and, depending on the load, current visitor is redirected to different box then previous visitor and by some chance one of those boxes did not get updated info during last upload.

P.S. be more descriptive in your topic next time, k?

Browser cache is not an important issue. It's your webmaster's responsibility to design a site that's cross-browser supported. If your host supports Perl/PHP or whatever, your webmaster should create a dynamic site in the first place. Your server administrator should never be the person to get blamed on.

Sorry about that. I was speaking in generalities.

You'll need IE 5 and a Mac (using OS 9 or OS X) to see the problem.

on IE 5/Mac people are seeing a broken graphic with the alt text of "70 years"
Now look at it with any other browser. The CODE is different.

In every other browser platform combination that graphic does not exist, the code for it does not exist. I know browsers display the same code differently but the browser does not write the code either.
That particular bit of code is a week old and I replaced it. I am the sole site developer using php and mysql. The server uses Linux 2.4.12 and Apache 1.3.20.

The mystery is: how can people see this old code if they have never been to the site before and are on an ISP that has never connected to this site before.

The admin's solution is to "get another browser". I would like to figure this out because I have never seen anything like it before. I test on as many browsers platforms as I can.

Thanks Again

If the server is using MOD_GZIP which calls for HTTP 1.1 compliant clients and IE 4 & 5 on the Mac are not compliant could this somehow cause the problem?

Hey Guess what! It was a problem with mod_gzip running on the server. You could only see the server problem if you used IE4 and 5 on a Mac. I kept asking him to please look at it and he refused because he was 100% sure there was no problem on the server side. It turns out the tech I was speaking to was really a salesman that helps out on weekends with tech issues.

Look what I had to deal with before the problem got fixed.
I got these comments:

Saturday, January 5, 2002 4:48 PM
"Like you said yourself,, hardly anyone will ever use IE on a Mac...and of course theres a reason for that."

Saturday, January 5, 2002 4:48 PM
"I have to close this ticket, because your account is 100% operational and functioning perfectly as it should. Your problems are client side and we cannot help you with that.
Trust me,, regardless of what anyone tells you,, its not a server problem. 3000 other people use our service and we've never even heard of such a thing happening until now."

Saturday, January 5, 2002 3:21 AM
"Theres absolutely nothing wrong with your account. FTP and all directories are fine. You must be doing something wrong."

Sun Jan 06, 2002 04:14:16 AM US/Eastern
"1) you FTP'ed the old code mistakenly.
2) Your browser is cacheing it.

If IE doesn't work good on a MAC,, then don't use IE on a MAC. To me this is just common sense...
I had a "beta" VCR once,, and It took awhile, but eventually I switched to VHS like everyone else. Think about it."


He gave himself away with that last one - beta is really the better format. They had to "clean out the MOD_GZIP". I am not sure what that means but everything works now.

I agree with you on never trust a salesman.

I recently had a problem with my ISP. Sorry, EX-ISP. I was using Freeserve.Co.Uk and had always had an excellent connection using their 'Hometime' service, which gave me unlimited access between 6pm and 8am.

Suddenly I couldn't connect, took about 30 attempts just to connect and then it was a really slow connection. All my other ISPs were working perfectly.
For the first couple of days I thought it was just a minor problem at Freeserve and that they would fix it, but it carried on so, in the end, I rang their laughingly called 'Tech Support' line.

The guy I spoke to was giving me a few things to try (just basic Windows settings, nothing I hadn't already tried) and wouldn't listen when I told him I had already done this. He said he was following it all onscreen and couldn't do anything except push a button for the next screen!!

I asked him if I could talk to someone who knew what they were doing and he said, "Sorry all of our techy people have gone home.".
I said, "I thought this was a tech support line?".
He basically told me that he was a salesman and didn't have a clue about anything technical and that ALL their tech support people just followed info on their screens!!!

I was already extemely pissed off at this point, and he made things a LOT worse by trying to sell me their more expensive 24/7 package!

I told him where to stick his sales talk and changed my ISP the following day.

The worst part? This 'helpline' cost me 50p per minute!

If you're thinking of using Freeserve for anything - DON'T - you'll be extremely dissapointed!!