Badly rendered websites = dealbreaker

[TLRtheory]

I'm not sure if you guys have used other platforms recently, but many web pages don't tender right on my iPhone either. So I don't think it will ever be perfect on WP. Although it's much better on 8.1.1.

Yeah, as someone who also owns an LG G3 and iPhone 6, I meant to address this... especially for the lady about to switch to iOS for Santander when the site has the same rendering issues in Safari. The grass isn't any greener on the Android side of things either (of course; on the other platforms you have dedicated Santander bank apps... going by the reviews, we aren't missing out on anything special).


That's Chrome, then Firefox BTW. My original intention was actually to do a side-by-side comparison between IE on WP, Chrome/Firefox on Android and Safari on iOS... but seeing as loading pages on IE gave me (and quite a few others within this very same thread) no issues there it wouldn't have proved anything.

Won't change much though... despite providing successfully rendered samples of every site listed thus far there's always the strange phenomena that something will simply be cool to hate for little to no reason than "Other people are doing it"... unfortunately IE is the target here. Something that may cause your problems are restrictive or metered connections. At work we have a restricted network that blocks certain types of scripting, and therefore causes pages to load incorrectly. That may be what the few people are running into when they say they have rendering issues... but no example here solidifies that IE is the problem.

 

[Mike Waechter]

No, there are plenty of sites that look and behave poorly. Apologist of the platform are the cause for its demise, especially at Microsoft.

With the latest updates, visit CNN.com and tell me how the entire site is unusable but on my iPhone4, it works just fine? Simple and basic stuff my friend..

 

[TLRtheory]

With the latest updates, visit CNN.com and tell me how the entire site is unusable

I'd love to tell you how it's "unusable," because that'd mean we finally - at long last - have a user here who's actually provided an example of something that just doesn't work right on IE instead of just the usual IE fad hate. I typically spend twenty or so minutes of my morning on the MSN news app just killing time before I have to have to work on my own websites for the organization that pays me to do so... so I decided that I'd switch it up and use CNN instead.

As expected... had zero issues. Played with their sexy (stolen) hamburger menu for quite a while, did some searches, read a number or articles... no problems.

 

[Mike Waechter]

No, no more than two weeks ago it was unusable on a 1520, 830.

 

[TLRtheory]

No, no more than two weeks ago it was unusable on a 1520, 830.

Well, I've got an Icon, 820, a 520, and my wife's 1020 and the site's rendering much like the examples I've provided on every one of those Lumias (FTR, the screencaps are all from my 820).

They probably just worked out some kinks in their own site since you last looked into it some weeks ago. I see that their mobile site is 46 errors away from a successful validation, so I'd be more than willing to bet they're still working out some kinks. Every great site is.

 

[fgaudet]

Just for gags, I went ahead and loaded up some of the sites I saw mentioned here to see how they worked. Not a single instance of that "error" screen...

About the cbc.ca site: if you click the "News" section, you'll get the "Error - go back" page.
For us Canadians, Cortana's headlines are often cbc.ca links; half the headlines proposed by Cortana not working is a major frustration.

 

[TLRtheory]

About the cbc.ca site: if you click the "News" section, you'll get the "Error - go back" page.

Certainly did not, but that's actually something I addressed earlier.

Decided to check out the news tab of cbc.ca to see if maybe I could get any of the issues mentioned here..

View attachment 98070
...as expected, IE rendered it just fine.

 

[fgaudet]

Certainly did not, but that's actually something I addressed earlier.

Pray tell, how do you get to that page? Can you post a link that works on your 830? Are you on DP, Denim update?

My IE is set to "mobile version", rest is default settings. Lumia 830 RM-985_1000, Denim *not* updated, OS version: 8.10.14157.200, firmware: 02040.00005.14373.00001.

Every cbc.ca headline proposed by Cortana ends up on the white "Error - Go back" page. Just tried another cbc.ca headline and it did it again with this link : http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/world/ukraine-coal-mine-blast-kills-1-dozens-feared-dead-1.2980938

Going directly to cbc.ca redirects me to CBC.ca/m/touch, and shows this menu :

​

Clicking "News", "Sports", "My Region", always ends up on this page or a totally white, empty page which if refreshed ends up on the same error page :

​

However, the Music, Radio One, Television and Program Guide sections work, as does the desktop version of the site.

 

[fgaudet]

cnn.com seems to work, but once the page is loaded, it's unresponsive : can't scroll to anywhere of click anything. Hmm, cnn.com is hit or miss : sometimes stays unresponsive, sometimes not. Some rendering or loading issues...

fatface.com loads ok, but is rather unresponsive.
avsforum.com works fine for me, as does hardwareheaven.com.

 

[sugarbowl]

Bleacherreport does not render well for me. I'm not allowed to post URLs

 

[TLRtheory]

Pray tell, how do you get to that page? Can you post a link that works on your 830? Are you on DP, Denim update?

My IE is set to "mobile version", rest is default settings. Lumia 830 RM-985_1000, Denim *not* updated, OS version: 8.10.14157.200, firmware: 02040.00005.14373.00001.

Every cbc.ca headline proposed by Cortana ends up on the white "Error - Go back" page. Just tried another cbc.ca headline and it did it again with this link : http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/world/ukraine-coal-mine-blast-kills-1-dozens-feared-dead-1.2980938

Going directly to cbc.ca redirects me to CBC.ca/m/touch

And that's exactly where I start as well. But clicking the News tab doesn't give me that error at all. It goes straight to the page pictured below where I can start looking at articles. The entire URL I get is: http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/news.html




I would like to first re-iterate that all pictures provided are from my Lumia 820, not an 830. No special dev preview version of 8.1, no Windows Insider. I've never touched my IE settings, so they should be whatever the factory settings are. My phone info/about page notes that I'm on Lumia Cyan 8.10.12393.890, fw: 3051.50009.1425.2001

Side-Note: As of yesterday, I also added a Lumia 635 to my collection just for the sake of playing with Windows 10... cbc.ca's news tab (as well as fatface and cnn) works just fine on that too.

 

[Cormango]

I also have the same problem with cbc.ca. Cortana is always providing me with headlines but I can't read any of the articles. It's been going on for as long as I can remember. Rogers Lumia 920 with Cyan and Dev Preview. I've also tested it on a TELUS Lumia 625 and Lumia 635 running Cyan - same results.

 

[fgaudet]

I think I figured out how to get cbc.ca to work: On the cbc.ca/m/touch, tap "Switch Site" and select "Desktop". After that, all the sections will work, but still remain in mobile format oddly enough... The downside is cbc.ca links from Cortana will show in desktop format - not an ideal solution but better than the current error page...

 

[Mike Waechter]

CNN.com isn't working... I'll upload a video but a majority of links are not functional.

 

[TLRtheory]

I think I figured out how to get cbc.ca to work: On the cbc.ca/m/touch, tap "Switch Site" and select "Desktop". After that, all the sections will work, but still remain in mobile format oddly enough... The downside is cbc.ca links from Cortana will show in desktop format - not an ideal solution but better than the current error page...

That sounds like a lot of work.

I will note that I finally found my way to the error screen. Within the IT firm I work for, I was deployed to a site where our team had nothing but a metered connection.

Trying to load cbc.ca's news tab on that metered connection gave me the error retry thing... but back on my home connection (Charter US, St Louis Area) and on my regular mobile network (AT&T US) it loads just fine.

Seeming more and more like this is a network issue and not WP/IEMobile.

 

[SnailUK]

Is there a browser on WP that allows the browser string to be changed?

One of the problems with webpages, is they aren't a level playing field. Sites work different based upon what device/browser their believe is using them.

I'm sure there was a browser that allowed the identification string to be changed, and if you pretended to be an iPhone, web pages rendered much better.