Google analytic issues with Firefox....

[Alfred]

KDE 4.4.5
Firefox 3.6.8

I am on the road and traveling, so I am not using my own ISP at the moment.
For some reason I am now getting blank white pages if the Website is using "Google analytic"
Any idea how to fix this? 

[wedgetail]

Alfred

I don't really know what this is about but assuming you are googling with Firefox.  Start Firefox from konsole  do you googling to get the white pages.  What happens to messages in konsole? Any indications of errors?

[horusfalcon]

Um, just for everyone's edification:

http://www.google.com/analytics/

As can be seen, Google Analytics is a service that Google sells to customers to help them track, aggregate, and data mine their web traffic to enable those customers to then write better targeted advertisements.  It has become a pervasive presence on everything from porn sites to those dealing in baby toys.

Since this is Firefox we're dealing with, a couple of questions are in order:  are you running a "barefoot" install of Firefox from the Synaptic repositories (I'm presuming you got 3.6.8 from there, and not from firefox.com), or is it a custom update?  Did you install any add-ons such as NoScript? (It's a great add-on, by the way... I run it.  There's no better way to learn about how junked up a lot of the places one goes to are than to have to grant permissions every time a javascript attempts to run.)

Do you see anything at all or is the page you are attempting to load completely blank?  (Kinda sounds like it...)

Not knowing any more than I do right now, I'd start by looking at what add-ons you have for sure.  

One more thing:  I dimly remember this happening to me back when I was attempting to run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 on the same system at the same time.  Firefox 3 does not play nice with 2 - bad stuff happens, at least in my experience.

Anyhow, look at what you're running and jot back.  It sounds as though something is attempting to block Google Analytics (which can be done safely and selectively with NoScript.)

It might also be worthwhile to run a different web browser and see if it has the same problem?

Jot back and let's pursue this one.

Later On,
D

[Alfred]

Alfred

I don't really know what this is about but assuming you are googling with Firefox.  Start Firefox from konsole  do you googling to get the white pages.  What happens to messages in konsole? Any indications of errors?

Thanks wedgeling

Should have thought of it myself and yes, firing it up in konsole gave me a "segmentation fault"...which really means nothing as this can be caused by numerous issues.

Whatever the issue was with the specific ISP or filtering this Motel was using and as expected cleared up once I was back home.

[Alfred]

Since this is Firefox we're dealing with, a couple of questions are in order:  are you running a "barefoot" install of Firefox from the Synaptic repositories (I'm presuming you got 3.6.8 from there, and not from firefox.com), or is it a custom update?

As you put in such a huge effort to help (very detailed..thanks you  ), I will try to reply on each specific part:
First....I am running firefox as retrieved via Synaptic repositories, but with existing saved profile from my original Mandriva PWP install as I kept my "/home" partition intact.
Since the problem did "not" exist until I used it in this specific motel..this should be unrelated.

Did you install any add-ons such as NoScript? (It's a great add-on, by the way... I run it.  There's no better way to learn about how junked up a lot of the places one goes to are than to have to grant permissions every time a javascript attempts to run.)

Have been running NoScript for a long time...

Do you see anything at all or is the page you are attempting to load completely blank?  (Kinda sounds like it...)

Yep
Completely white page..but the funny thing is that the pages would load first and then disappear once the last parts of page laoding was completed..leaving me with a blank page 

Not knowing any more than I do right now, I'd start by looking at what add-ons you have for sure.

Yep....agree 

One more thing:  I dimly remember this happening to me back when I was attempting to run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 on the same system at the same time.  Firefox 3 does not play nice with 2 - bad stuff happens, at least in my experience.

These issues have been resolved a long time ago (but good point anyway).
I have for a couple of years now been running at least 2 Firefox Browser windows, each with their own range of tabs open for a while on different desktops.

Anyhow, look at what you're running and jot back.  It sounds as though something is attempting to block Google Analytics (which can be done safely and selectively with NoScript.)

It might also be worthwhile to run a different web browser and see if it has the same problem?

Jot back and let's pursue this one.

It ended up not being Google Analytic, but never found the real cause.
All the sites worked again once home...except for one only where the flash content just refused to work.
Finally disabling "AdBlock" fixed that.

So it's all fixed...but stuffed if I know what was the real cause 

[horusfalcon]

Your most likely culprit here is some sort of web "sanitizer" the motel was using to minimize their legal exposure from kids using their service to browse to "unsuitable" sites (wanting to avoid lawsuits by parents who should have been watching the kids more closely to begin with, but I digress...)

Some of those can be really annoying.  I stayed at Microtel once a while back and couldn't surf to anything but Google, Youtube, and Ebay... go figure.  Oh, and Expedia, the Microtel site, and Yahoo! (but you get the idea - nothing really "fun" or interesting...)

Oh, and some places are unfriendly to anything but IE - they say so in their terms of use.  At least Microtel didn't care if I used Firefox - but I didn't mention that I was running Linux... (back then I was a bit scared to - a bad experience at a Holiday Inn where the so-called IT staff didn't know their bee-hinds from third base kinda made me more cagey for a while.)  I try to pick places when I travel that are more Linux-friendly, or at least more net-neutral nowadays.

Have to agree with you on NoScript - I just started running it this month and what an eye-opener it has been.  It is beginning to look like javascript and other scripting languages are what the web is really all about these days.  (well, that and Flash...)  Don't really know where I'm going with that other than to say that NoScript just really makes it possible to see and become aware of (and CONTROL) most of that stuff to a greater degree.

Glad everything is back to normal for you now.  Don't worry if you see a long post from me - get worried if it ever gets under a hundred words 'cause I'm either in great pain or serious distress of some kind.  It's just in my detail-oriented, minutiae-obsessed nature to go on at length.  I'll stop now and talk at ya...

Later ON,
D