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I am completely puzzled and discouraged. There is the following problem on a website: Google AdSense banners are not showing up in Internet Explorer until the browser is somehow interacted with.

I have checked it on four completely different computers and the problem looks the same: the ads are not showing at all, until you do one of the following:

  • resize the window, or
  • press "alt" button on the keyboard, or
  • open up the console (F12)

In other words, the ads show up right in their right place after I somehow interact with the browser window. And that is happening in Internet Explorer 11! On four totally different computers.

I can't wrap my mind about it. Does anybody have any kind of idea what this might be?

timetowonder
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  • Have you validated that the HTML is valid? The page shows 51 errors. I'd start there. Weird behavior is usually associated with invalid markup. Also, why the IE8 compatibility tag? – Erik Funkenbusch Apr 30 '14 at 21:10
  • I agree that the code of the webpage is a total mess. I still think the the problem is not connected to it. There is obviously some kind of IE compatibility-peculiarity going on. – timetowonder Apr 30 '14 at 21:16
  • You have unclosed tags, forcing compatibility to IE8 mode, and all kinds of other problems. These are the #1 reason for strange behavior in browsers. You ask our advice, and then refuse to accept it.. well, good luck. – Erik Funkenbusch Apr 30 '14 at 21:18
  • I'm not refusing... :) Thanks for advice. I will be trying to fix some of that and see what happens... It's not my website, though, I'm not going to completely rewrite it. I just found this problem really strange. It's one thing not showing an element at all, and another showing it after subtle interaction. – timetowonder Apr 30 '14 at 21:25

1 Answers1

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I've finally found the solution. It was indeed a "ie-compatibility" issue, yet not obvious and not that easy to find.

Probably some wordpress plugin added the following line to the header:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7"/>


I changed it to

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"/>

And it worked. Why do I say it was not easy to find? Well, I played a lot with compatibility settings in the IE browser and nothing worked. And again the way the bug represented itself would never make me think that such line was responsible.

timetowonder
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