Several members in recent days have been experiencing an issue when viewing the Forum, where clicking on a link takes you to a blank and endlessly loading page. If the member clicks on the Back button, however, instead of taking them back to the original page it goes "back" the page they originally intended on viewing. A couple weeks ago I started having this problem. I originally called it "jumping" as it seemed the Forum was jumping me ahead of the page I wanted to go.
After some time looking into the issue, I discovered the problem was Java related. I had recently upgraded from Java 6 Update 7 to Update 10. This version of Java seems to have a problem with Firefox 3.x under Windows (especially Windows Vista, but on Windows XP as well). This latest version of Java will cause a little-documented feature of Firefox called WYCIWYG (What You Cache Is What You Get) to become active when viewing pages on M1911.ORG. You can see this when you get to one of these infinite blank screens and clicking on the little down arrow to the right of the Forward button (it's called the Recent Pages function). You'll see that the latest page accessed starts with wyciwyg:// followed by the web URL to the page on this Forum.
When it was just me having this problem I posted about it and how I fixed it. But at the time no one else had the problem so I didn't go any further. But now I've come across two other members having the same issue. So with John's permission, I'm making this post to help our members who may experience the same problem.
If you are having this WYCIWYG or "jumping" problem, here is what you need to do:
1. Close all instances of Firefox, including our SMS Watcher window if you use that feature.
2. Go into Add/Remove Programs. Find and remove ALL instances of Java (there will usually be more than one).
3. Go into My Computer. Browse your hard drive. Go to the x:\Program Files\Java directory and delete the entire folder.
4. Restart your computer.
5. Open Firefox and go to the Archive: Java[tm] Technology Products Download web page. Go down six items to JDK/JRE - 6 and in the box to the right select "6 Update 7" and click on "Go".
6. On the next screen click on "Download JRE". Then select your platform, click on the license agreement checkbox and click "Continue".
7. Choose the required offline file. It should be jre-6u7-windows-i586-p.exe (or jre-6u7-windows-x64.exe for 64-bit platforms). Click on the filename and the download should begin.
8. Close Firefox. Find the file you downloaded and install it. Go with the defaults.
Once it is installed you should be good to go. Just remember that if Java prompts you to update, choose "No". If you're really savvy, go into the Java console and disable the option to check for newer versions.
As I said earlier, this problem started happening with Java 6 Update 10. Java has released Update 11, but that version, too, has the same issue though less often than Update 10. However, this isn't the only issue I have with these latest version of Java. My company's time recording software is Java based and it doesn't work well with Update 10 or 11, and they have recommended staying with Update 7 until further notice.
Hopefully this post will be a benefit to our fellow members. If you have any questions regarding this procedure, feel free to post about them here. And as always, if you have a computer issue you can always open a Help Desk ticket.
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