Accessing the website

[rohan]

My usual client PC set up is a netbook running XPHomeSP3 and IE8 because it's small, relatively light weight and convenient for travelling. However, that is now becoming less reliable as it's four and a half years old, and I'm in the process of transferring my daily usage to a Macbook Air running both OSX (with Safari) and Win7ProSP1 (with IE10).

Anyway, the point of my post is that this website works fine on the netbook with IE8 and on the Air with Safari. However, with IE10 (and indeed IE9), I cannot see any of the indicators that show unread posts - the red circle by the forum name and the red box to access unread posts. Similarly, I cannot see the darker blue background to the header on this new topic page, nor any of the medium blue / green backgrounds to the various fields and icons on this page. With IE9 and IE10, all I see is masses of white space instead of the visual cues that I'm used to having.

While I do have an immediate solution to hand in my transfer to OSX and Safari (and possibly Safari for Windows, which I shall be testing next week), I thought I'd ask if anybody might have any ideas on set up which would restore the familiar scene to the later versions of IE. Otherwise, poor old IE will finally be relegated to a daily check with M$ update, as it seems it has with so many other users ...

Thanks in advance for any info on this puzzle,
regs,
Ro

[gordon-in-aberdeen]

Ro, quick suggestion, have you looked at IE10 's Compatability View settings? It sounds like your browser may not be understanding Style Sheet settings the site might be sending it. Switching on compatibility view might fix it, or at least give a clue to what's happening

Good luck finding a fix

Gordon

[TSR2]

Gordon has hit the nail on the head. In IE9 and 10 you need to add cbfsim.co.uk to compatibility view. This is largely because there have been no updates to the forum software for several years now other than a couple of security fixes.

[rohan]

Gordon and Ben,
yes, that was my thinking too, so I clicked on the "compatibilty view" button in IE several times and it did absolutely nothing ...

I note your comment about adding the site to the compatibility view list, but I've been all over the Internet options applet and the various "buttons" in IE itself and couldn't find anything to do with this function. Please could you give me some pointers on how to add the site to whichever option that should be.

Thank you muchly for the input,
regs,
Ro

[TSR2]

Hi Ro.

In IE10, right on a space on the top of the browser and click "Menu Bar" if its not already displayed. This will show the old file, edit, view etc menu.

Next, from that menu, select Tools > compatibility view settings

in the "add this website" box type in *.cbfsim.co.uk then click add. Then click close.

Finally close your web browser and open it again, and that should be it.

[rohan]

Ben,
thanks very much for that - I finally have a menu bar in IE10.

Bummer - I already had an entry for cbfs in the view settings box, and when I tried to add "*.cbfsim.co.uk", it simply stripped the asterisk off and left it as the previous value "cbfsim.co.uk". The bad news is that this made not one jot of difference, as expected given that there was a value there. Even worse, I realised that I couldn't see the "reply" button, so I've had to wait to make this report on my old netbook.

I hope you have some more ideas, because I'm fresh out,
regs,
Ro

[Dev One]

Try Firefox......
Keith

[TSR2]

Java script? I don't have java installed, but java script must be enabled I think (from memory) (I've tried IE9, 10 and 11 and its working fine with it in compatibility view, although it doesn't need compatibility view in IE11 BETA)

[gordon-in-aberdeen]

Ro, thinking about what you are viewing, have you cleared your Internet explorer history etc. at any point?

There might still be something in your history folders holding IE10 up from displaying the page correctly even after you switched on compatibility view. Also, have you tried setting compatibility view for all web sites? If you do that you can also remove any preset web sites from the list, in case thats causing it too.

[rohan]

Keith,
yes, I've used FireFox, but apart from the ability to resume downloads, there's just something about it that makes me feel uneasy about using it. My quest here is to be able to do more with IE than just access m$ update, as I have a load of copies of web pages in my library (for future reference), and, for preference, I don't really want to start saving files from a different browser.

Gordon,
yes, I clear the cache, cookies, etc. with CCleaner after every on-line session - history is set to keep only 7 days. No, I haven't tried setting compatibility view for all sites, but will do that later after my shopping trip.

Ben,
Java - ugh. My netbook shows that I have Java 7.0.210 installed, which may not be the very latest release. I do know that I've had no end of trouble with some websites over the use of Java - the worst example was when FlightSim, amongst others, reported that I needed to install Java 7 release 21 despite the fact that that was the version that I had just installed. I also had endless messages about my Java install being insecure. I do know that the Java website says that it's installed correctly, FWIW. Anyway, I'll check my IE9 and IE10 installs later and report back. Please let me know if there is something specific that I need to set in the IE or Java configurations.

Thanks again for all your input,
regs,
Ro