IE6 and browser freeze

[Stern]

This isn't about Fork Javascript specifically, but regarding Ajax in
general...

In rare cases, Ajax seems to freeze IE6 (even though it is set to
Asynchronous). The bug can't be reproduced because it seems to happens
rarely and totally at random. The only info I could find on Google is
this thread:

http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/thread/b311D-eghba.aspx

Note the possible solution at the very bottom of that page.

[Peter Michaux]

Hi,

It seems that they had a problem with the following line of code.

request.setRequestHeader("Connection", "close");

The Fork library doesn't have a line similar to this so does this
problem have any implications for Fork's Ajax library?

Thanks,
Peter

[Stern]

You got me there. But at rare random times, I did notice the 'freeze'
bug with a test application based on ForkJS (even using your timeout
function)...

Maybe the above solution is not always applicable.

For example, I just found a thread where people are complaining that
Microsoft Live was freezing the browser, and one guy's theory is that
it was "because of the asynch load of images etc. via AJAX"
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=188552

It sounds like a lot of guessing, and maybe it's not a single bug --
but a common symptom for several possible problems? Very difficult to
troubleshoot, but something to keep an eye on?

On Aug 20, 12:06 pm, "Peter Michaux" <petermich...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,

[Peter Michaux]

On 8/20/07, Stern <ster...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>

> You got me there. But at rare random times, I did notice the 'freeze'
> bug with a test application based on ForkJS (even using your timeout
> function)...

Very strange. It sounds like this is not a repeatable bug. I can't
imagine what any Ajax library could be doing that would induce such a
freeze.

> Maybe the above solution is not always applicable.
>
> For example, I just found a thread where people are complaining that
> Microsoft Live was freezing the browser, and one guy's theory is that
> it was "because of the asynch load of images etc. via AJAX"
> http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=188552
>
> It sounds like a lot of guessing, and maybe it's not a single bug --
> but a common symptom for several possible problems? Very difficult to
> troubleshoot, but something to keep an eye on?

Something to watch for sure. If a repeatable version of the bug can be
pinned down then maybe something could be done to workaround it.

Given that it is random it could be anything like the garbage
collector running or a user event occurring at just the wrong time
that causes some problem in IE. Ajax libraries are a relatively fixed
set of API calls so I'd think if the API calls were wrong then the
would be wrong for every Ajax request.

The good news is developers are using the general pool of Ajax
libraries without consistently bad results and all these libraries are
roughly the same. Also IE6 use is on the decline so the number of
these random freezes should decrease hopefully.

Peter