Another update to theSnowSite.com

Another update of theSnowSite. This one was minor…

The update addressed a number of problems, the main one being that a last minute change to the code on the main page caused a failure of the content to display correctly in Internet Explorer (never use ‘description’ as an id value on an AJAX site!). This was difficult to track down as I first thought it was caused by some stray code that was getting added to the page such as:

function SymError()
{
  return true;
}
window.onerror = SymError;

and

window.onerror = SymError;
var SymRealWinOpen = window.open;

function SymWinOpen(url, name, attributes)
{
    return (new Object());
}

window.open = SymWinOpen;

and

var SymRealOnLoad;
var SymRealOnUnload;

function SymOnUnload()
{
    window.open = SymWinOpen;
    if(SymRealOnUnload != null)
    SymRealOnUnload();
}

function SymOnLoad()
{
    if(SymRealOnLoad != null)
    SymRealOnLoad();
    window.open = SymRealWinOpen;
    SymRealOnUnload = window.onunload;
    window.onunload = SymOnUnload;
}

SymRealOnLoad = window.onload;
window.onload = SymOnLoad;

It was somewhat confusing as to where this code was coming from, anyway, a quick search of the net with http://www.google.com/search?q=symerror showed that the problem was with Norton Internet Security from Symantec and is part of their so called ‘ad/pop-up blocker’ solution. What a joke, what a terrible way to deal with a problem (Safari on the Mac handles things much better, as does Firefox (windows and Mac))!

Anyway, after disabling the Norton Internet Security software the problem still existed… therefore there was another problem, and after some work it turned out to be the use of ‘description’ as an id for a div tag. Only in Internet Explorer that could be a problem..

Also, a number of changes were made to the database so that certain entries now display correctly.

And finally, some changes have been made to the way the main page loads, namely it now identifies the country of origin of the user and then starts the map at that country.