In yet another case of widgets going crazy and causing havoc, a bug in Sitemeter has caused a large number of websites and blogs using the free web analytics tool to fail loading for users of Internet Explorer. Users of Google’s Blogger were amongst the first to report experiencing problems with sites running Sitemeter at 6pm pacific time on Friday. The problem has since been partially rectified, although some 16 hours later and without a notification or official response from the company either via email or on their blog.
Sitemeter proudly displays a list of the most highly trafficked sites running their service on their homepage. The sites include the entire Gawker Media network, the gossip blogger PerezHilton and the popular political blog DailyKos. We verified that all of these sites were failing to load in Internet Explorer, with nothing more than a blank page and a response in the form IE error window indicating a connection issue with sitemeter.com. The issue also affected our own Techcrunch France blog, which resorted to removing the sitemeter code as the only solution. The browser error indicates that the problem was with the Javascript code that is included in each page.
Uptime monitoring services such as Netcraft did not report any downtime for these sites, since the issue was Javascript and browser-specific rather than a broader HTTP connection issue. The main sitemeter website remained operational, while hundreds of bloggers posted about the problem and our tips mailbox filled with links and complaints on the issue.
Back in May, Michael wrote about how our own issues with widget providers on Techcrunch affected the performance and uptime of this site, and how having a provider not communicate such issues makes matters worse. There is no real reason for a widely used service such as Sitemeter to go down, as there are solutions available (such as using an IFRAME) where a fault in embedded code can be bypassed and at least allow the remainder of the page to load. Worse still, there is no real reason as to why, after 16 hours since the problems surfaced, there is no official word from the company despite the level of noise from users and visitors to the sites who have embedded the service.
Update: Turns out that this was the result of a bug in Internet Explorer, which the Sitemeter developers didn’t account or test for. The technical details and a description of the bug involved are here. Does this still mean that Sitemeter are to blame, or are we about to see the backlash shift to Microsoft because of a known bug and a developer not testing.
I was having the same problem with my TypePad Blog and had to remove the widget. http://www.FliteRecord.com
It’s not IE’s fault, it’s sitemeter. Statcounter mentioned that they rejected an offer from a spyware company to take money in exchange for adding popups to the code users show, alluding that SiteMeter was known to have accepted the offer.
That’s one reason why I don’t use sitemeter. Not testing it in ie is a big oversight.
IE needs to die.
Since this is a well known bug – http://weblogs....o-Crash-IE.aspx – and not a very hard one to detect, of course Sitemeter is to blame.
Good thing I am running FF and have sitemeter.com null-routed in /etc/hosts
Sitemeter is to blame.
IE6’s javascript shortcomings are widely known at this point, and they should have tested the change. It seems as though developers are starting to write off IE6 way too soon – it still constitutes a huge percentage of users.
There’s no question that IE6 is a terrible web browser. Develop in Firefox if you must, but always, ALWAYS check in IE6.
“Operation Aborted” errors seem to come up in IE most often when improperly using document.write(), writing bad markup to .innerHTML and so on at document render/parse time – which is not a recommended practice, anyhow.
Sometimes malformed HTML can cause these errors when JS tries to manipulate the document also.
Due to JS’ blocking behaviour when loading, sometimes sites can “freeze” when trying to load JS from an external site that’s down – an unfortunate risk when using the standard method. Dynamically generating and appending a node via JS is one way to get around this.
Come on guys, yet again something happens in IE and it’s IE’s fault, if it happens in FF it’s the website’s fault?
That’s why I use http://www.i-stats.com It works like a champ.
Just wanted to note that I’m now seeing HTTP 400 (Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)) errors when I try to check my SiteMeter stats. I was able to check earlier this morning so something’s definitely going on. The main SiteMeter page is still loading, though.
my site loads with the widget on it, even though it isn’t working. http://blabtech.blogspot.com
This is NOT a new bug and working around browser bugs is part of a Javascript programmer’s work.
In programmer’s speak, this is called “quirks” and EVERY browser has them… Safari, FF, IE, Opera.
That’s why testing is very important. For Sitemeter to blame IE is really trying to shift the blame IMHO. They should own up and just admit they f’d up, because it is ENTIRELY their fault.
Its not like Microsoft released a patch that broke their app. Its something that has been there for years.
Shame on them for not owning up that the blame for bringing down their customer’s sites rests solely on their hands.
OK let me pipe down a bit, I didn’t read that the Sitemeter folks didn’t actually blame anybody “yet”. The blame part was Nik pontificating.
As for why this can’t be avoided? Well there are very FEW bugs that will bomb the site (ie. cause the page to totally blank out) should the script fail and apparently the programmers weren’t knowledgeable about this one. Most of the time, putting the script at the bottom of the page is enough.
I’ve encountered this bug, and yeah, it aint pretty, makes you look like a total Noob.
Eight ways to fix the problem: http://motls.bl...-sitemeter.html
I blame people for using IE, but also for developers not testing for IE bugs. No IE hacks aren’t fun, but unfortunately they’re necessary.
Sitemeter’s fault. When it comes to cross-compatibility in browsers, the first rule of web development is there are no rules. Only an incompetent developer would not test in IE.
the issue with allowing/using 3rd party plugins on your site is one that the webmaster should take responsibility for. to be frank, someof us have been screaming that this kind of crap is only going to get worse over time.
in the beginning, the site/webmaster took pride in the fact that their site loaded fastest, which was what allowed akamai and other CDNs to thrive/grow.
now it’s as if people don’t really care, or check this stuff out as to how it’s going to impact their end users…
i mean, hell.. who at techcrunch has actually tested how all their crap 3rd party apps load on different browsers…
i got so tired of it, that i essentially stripped out the ads/3rd party stuff.. just the text baby!!
peace..
You got to be kidding me that they didn’t know about Microsoft’s famed Operation Aborted error — it has been around for a decade! There have been so many writeups about implementing an onDOMReady (YUI name for it) to help avoid it on IE that it is nauseous.
I agree with Bill, Sitemeter is to blame. There is no excuse for not testing a browser version still so widely used even if it sucks
As a 3rd party analytics provider, we feel SiteMeter’s pain… blackouts/blockages like this are no fun for anyone.
Like SiteMeter, ClustrMaps provides a ‘plain vanilla’ option – pure HTML, simple JPG only, no javascript, no cookies, nothing fancy. Unlike SiteMeter’s detailed stats, ClustrMaps is complementary in that it provides a ‘gestalt map’ showing at a glance all visitor locations… many user’s have both ClustrMaps and Sitemeter for this reason… anyway, here’s wishing everyone a speedy recovery from this blip… outages/blockages like this are bad for all of us in the analytics/geolocation business, so it’s good for everyone to get this resolved soon, to restore user confidence!
-The ClustrMaps Team
techcrunch im getting worried..i found out about this on twitter from an non tech guy. Yesterday, Twitter seems to be one step in front of a blog.
Not testing with IE is inexcusable. MS IE *is* a bug, just about everything it does is nonstandard and requires special workarounds. However it is the most prevalent browser out there and to launch a new version of a sitemeter widget without testing compatibility with IE is incredibly dumb. 100% sitemeter’s fault.
I am wondering which version of IE was affected. But surely this should have been tested whether you like IE or not.
You sure Daily Kos was down? We took down the sitemeter as a precaution, but everything I’ve read indicates that it was a Javascript error, and we don’t use the JS version of the sitemeter. We even tested in IE before we took off the code and saw no problems.
So did you really check Daily Kos and see it was down, or did you embelish your post for effect? In fact, that link to Reference Frame states. “Meanwhile, there are several methods to fix the problem on the webmaster’s side. One of them is to use the simplified, script-free counter.”
So again, did you really see Daily Kos down?
Does anyone know if this is fixed yet?
Thanks Sitemeter – We enjoyed a recent surge in visitors
reisboeken/
There are also issues with the new widgetbucks advertising code in IE. It completely breaks layouts in some situations. I am not sure what is the issue but it seems as though the quancast code (what widgetbucks serves when it runs a cpm ad instead of the widget) is the culprit.
Not only that but, they have told me that they have not been able to fix the bug for the last 3 months.
This was driviing me crazy the other day – I’m glad they were able to figure out what it was and fix it so fast.
I had sitemeter on my blog page, too. That’s so unfortunate.
Smooth move, ex lax.
We use site meter. The problem occurred on Friday when the site failed to load in Explorer. It would give you an error box with the message operation aborted. if you click on it a blank page would follow.
I went looking for solutions on the Internet and it was located in the Javascript. The problem since has been rectified. But it was down time for a day or two on our blog http://www.inde...alliancemtg.com.
This also happened with the very popular Mint, but nobody did report it. Check their forums.
Once SiteMeter had succeeded in injecting itself into millions of pages. Now they have turned into playing dirty games to make petty money!
You can track Microsofts fix for Operation Aborted here:
http://webbugtr...com/2008/08/bug -404-operation-aborted-in-ie.html
Just don’t expect a quick fix!