#1: Tom O'Connell (sensei69) on Jul 28, 2012

Jan: As i said i can't solve your new puzzles and have downloaded IE 9. Since then when I open to create a new puzzle the top & side (where all the numbers are located)is completely blackened out. When i look back at some of my already published puzzles and try to edit them...completely blackened out. Please help me if you can.

That's weird.

The puzzles are drawn by (1) making a big black area and (2) placing little white squares on top of it. The black "lines" are actually the black background showing through the gaps between the white tiles. Each white tile is actually an image. Some of the ones in the clue area have numbers on them.

So the clues being blacked out means that the tiles weren't loaded on top of the black background. An occasional black hole in the clue numbers usually means that one number tile couldn't be loaded for some reason, but having them all be black means none of them loaded, including the just plain white ones (not all rows and columns have the same number of clue numbers, so there are usually a lot of plain white tiles among the clue numbers). Since the same white tiles are used on the grid, and you don't say the grid is black, this can't be an image loading problem. (If an image is used more than once, then it is only loaded once.)

So what it must be is that the Javascript crashed after drawing the grid but before drawing the clues. It's the Javascript that places the tiles, and it'll just stop if it has an error, leaving the board half drawn.

Now, the site works perfectly for me in IE 9, so I can't reproduce this.

It would help a lot to know what the error message is that Javascript is failing on. IE 9 rather hides the messages. Let's see if I can remember how to bring them up (I'm not using a windows computer right now, so I can't try it.)

ALT-T should bring up the "Tools" menu. Select from that "Developer Tools". I think that brings up the developer window. It has various tabs. I think it might be the "SCRIPT" tab which has a "Console" tab under it. Theoretically the Console tab should have the error message in it. You might have to reload the puzzle page while the Console window is open to get the error message.

If you could cut/paste the error message here, it might give me some clues.

Not everyone should upgrade to IE9. This from zdnet.com:

"When it comes to desktop operating systems, IE 9 works only with Windows 7 and Vista. That's it. XP users? You're out of luck. There's no IE 9 for XP. Yes, according to NetMarketShare, the majority of Windows users are still running XP, 55%, to 23% running Windows 7 and 11% with Vista, but there's still no IE 9 for you."

More interesting info here:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/five-reasons-not-to-upgrade-to-windows-internet-explorer-9/817

Note that all the arguments against upgrading to IE 9 here amount to two things (1) IE 9 may not be available for your computer, and (2) Safari and Chrome are better.

Well, number one is pretty compelling, but you didn't need a tech expert to advise you not to install non-existent software. Number two may or may not be true, but it is irrelevant to my point that IE 9 is MUCH better than all previous IE versions.

If you have a computer that can run IE 9, and you occasionally use IE, then you should upgrade, whatever this guy says. You might also consider installing Chrome and Firefox and giving them a try. Which you choose as your default browser should depend on which you like best, not what some tech guru tells you. None of these browsers is a bad choice.

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