Tabs Missing when using Internet Explorer 8 (IE8)

[FromHollywood]

I recently installed CiviCRM and am configuring things before doing an import.   I am using IE8 but could not see any tabs when viewing Contacts (the tabs such as Relationships, Contributions, Change Log, etc).   I don't have Firefox on this machine but tried viewing a contact in Google Chrome and I could see the tabs.    I finally got Internet Explorer 8 to display the tabs by using "Tools---Compatibility View".   I believe it's a new part of IE8 that makes a page behave like it did under IE7. 

[Dave Greenberg]

Thanks for reporting this (I think this is the first post on IE8 issues) - AND for finding the workaround. The version of the Ajax library used in 2.2 (dojo 1.1) is not compatible w/ IE 8. Because we are migrated all our Ajax element from dojo to the jQuery library for 2.3 - we are not planning on upgrading the dojo library during the 2.2 cycle. Hence I think setting Compatibility View is the best bet for now.

[kwixson]

Compatibility View did not work for me. Is there any other option, or a reason why Compatibility View doesn't work for me, or how I can find out?

[Dave Greenberg]

You might try inquiring on the dojo forums (or if there's a built-in debug / jscript console in IE8 u could turn it on and look for errors and then search / google on them).

[CiviTeacher.com]

To clarify this workaround, to get Compatibility View to work you must actually click "Compatibility View Settings" and add your CiviCRM site (desired domain name) to the permanent list of websites to display in Compatibility View.  Simply clicking "Compatibility View" will not work in many cases.  {sarcasm}Thanks Microsoft!{/sarcasm}

[sandygawron]

Tabs Missing when using Firefox and Safari
All the tabs are missing when viewing contacts

[CiviTeacher.com]

Tabs missing in Safari and Firefox indicates a different problem that I have experienced.

Check your CiviCRM "base_url" in your configuration.  If you are accessing the page from a different URL the tabs may not display.

FOR INSTANCE:

Your base URL: http://www.yoursite.com
Accessing the page from: http://yoursite.com/civicrm/blah/blah/
(or vice versa!)

Then you will notice the tabs are not there.  This is particularly troublesome if you are forcing secure SSL (https) connections.

You can add an apache mod_rewrite rule to your .htaccess to fix this problem to remove or add the www to your URL string.

[FatherShawn]

Thanks Stoob!

That wasn't it, but it pointed us in the right direction.  (Sandy is our parish admin, and an excellent one too!)

The entire backend is supposed to be forced to https in apache, but was reverting to http after login.  I'll dive into the apache setup.  It's weird because this has worked this way for over a year.

In the meantime, manually switching the http to https is a workaround...

[CiviTeacher.com]

Thanks for the update.  I have experienced this issue with Tabs on multiple sites and have yet to fully understand why it happens, but I have a long list of items to check when it does, and one of them has always fixed the problem.

1. IE8 Compatibility View
2. www.domain.com vs domain.com inconsistencies, use .htaccess or httpd.conf RewriteRule to fix this, and check your civicrm.settings.php "base_url"
3. http vs https access, do you have Secure URL "forced" in settings?  Are any of your links hard coded to http or https when they shouldn't be?
4. making sure the "resource url" in CiviCRM under "global settings" is correct.  It probably shouldn't be hard coded to https (note the s) but just http.  you need the http in the front of the resource url for some civimail features

Good luck please post your results so others (including me) can learn.  THANKS!

[FatherShawn]

I do have the resource urls at https - and I have my apache conf set to force everything in the /administrator directory and below to ssl.  Those lines were commented out in the conf file - thus the trouble.

I remember now that I commented them out doing some troubleshooting recently.

[Chris Burgess]

You might try inquiring on the dojo forums (or if there's a built-in debug / jscript console in IE8 u could turn it on and look for errors and then search / google on them).

Code: [Select]

Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022)
Timestamp: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:11:21 UTC

Message: Member not found.

Line: 20
Char: 48632
Code: 0
URI: http://EXAMPLE.ORG/sites/all/modules/civicrm/packages/dojo/dojo/dojo.js

As a workaround, you can add the following header to your pages - might be good to get this in there as a temp fix until Dōjō is patched? Even though it's UGLY

Code: [Select]

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

[Chris Burgess]

On our (Drupal6) site, I fixed this by adding the following code to a custom module of ours. It could be added to the civicrm.module as well (though I would advise people to add their own module rather than hacking core CiviCRM code).

Code: [Select]

function mymodule_init() {
  if ( arg(0) == 'civicrm' ) {
    drupal_set_header('X-UA-Compatible: IE=7'); 
  }
}

This appears to have fixed the issue for us.

[ngdc]

I wondered (for hours and hours) what weird and wonderful thing I did to get rid of the navigation tabs.  Thanks for showing me that it was simply upgrading from IE7 to IE8.  The workabout worked, and so easy.

[Martin Fuggle]

I am running CiviCRM 2.2.8 where the IE8 problem is supposed to have been fixed.  However I am still unable to see the tabs on the contact record and have checked that the URLs are consistent.

I am stumped.  Is there any other advice that I can get so that I can solve the issue.

Cheers
Martin Fuggle

[Martin Fuggle]

I notice that in CiviCRM 2.2.8 the following has been inserted in the page source"

Code: [Select]

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />
The posts that I have seen indicate that this should be

Code: [Select]

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />
Where is this value stored so that I can make the change to see if it resolves the issue on my site?

Cheers
Martin Fuggle