What In The World Is Going On?

[WxGuy1]

OK, this has happened several times in the past few days... My main page at http://www.tornadocentral.com/index.php (or just http://www.tornadocentral.com ) includes a "layout.css" file ("@import url(layout.css);"). The file is located in that top-level folder -- http://www.tornadocentral.com/layout.css . For whatever reason, the contents of that file, when displayed in my broswer (Firefox v1.5), change after a few hours. Yes, they change. If I go to http://www.tornadocentral.com/layout.css, my browser shows the following:

 

>// ***
// Warnings Plug-In provided by SWIFT WX (www.swiftwx.com)
// ***
// Copyright (c) 2005 SWIFT WX, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
// Visit http://www.swiftwx.com

document.write('<table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 width=150 border=0 bgcolor="#000000">'
 + '<tr><td height=2></td></tr>'
 + '<tr><td align=center><IMG src="http://www.swiftwx.com/warnings/images/matrix-title.gif"></td></tr>'
 + '<tr><td align=center background="http://www.swiftwx.com/warnings/images/matrix-background.gif" style="background-repeat:no-repeat; background-position:center top">'); 
document.write('<table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=1 width="100%" border=0><tr><td colspan=2 height=20 style="font-family:Century Gothic,Arial;color:#00cc00;font-size:7pt">   Last updated: 10:33 AM CT</td></tr><tr><td width="13%" align=center><img src="http://www.swiftwx.com/warnings/images/SVR-matrix.gif" ></td><td width="87%"><a target=_blank href="http://www.swiftwx.com/bulletins.aspx?bulletinid=WUUS56-KOTX-131517" style="font-family:Century Gothic,Arial;color:#FFFFFF;font-size:7pt">-ID-Benewah County - 11:15 AM</a></font></td></tr><tr><td colspan=2 height=5></td></tr></table>');
document.write('<a href="http://www.swiftwx.com/home.asp?ref=PoweredBySWIFT" target=_blank><img align=right border=0 vspace=1 width=91 height=18 src="http://www.swiftwx.com/warnings/images/warnings-plugin-powered-matrix.gif"></a></td></tr>'); 
document.write('<tr><td align=m

 

How did that get there? If I use an FTP program to download that exact same file (layout.css), it shows the following (I copies the layout.css file to another folder -- see http://www.tornadocentral.com/now/layout.css to see the true contents of the layout.css file):

>body {
background-color:#000000;
color:#FFFFFF;
	font-size:1em;
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
width: 690px;
scrollbar-base-color: #000000;
scrollbar-arrow-color: #FFFFFF;
scrollbar-darkshadow-color: #808080;
scrollbar-shadow-color: #808080;
}
h1 {
text-align:center;
width: 690px;
}
h2 {
text-align:center;
width: 690px;
}
h3 {
text-align:center;
width: 690px;
}

{REST OF CSS FILE REMOVED FOR BREVITY}

 

Anyone have any idea what is going on? I'm not sure I understand how this is even possible LOL. How can the contents of a file transferred via FTP be entirely different than the contents of the same file transferred to my browser? I've had to re-upload the layout.css a couple of times per day in order to fix the problem. However, after 12 or so hours, this problem emerges, and I need to re-upload the CSS file. I'm stumped!

 

EDIT: OK, I have the following code in my index.php page:

><div style="position:absolute; top:325px; left:700px;">
<script language="javascript" 
src="http://www.swiftwx.com/warnings/warnings-plugin-matrix.aspx">
</script></div>

 

The code that appears as MY layout.css is, incidentally, the same as (or similar to) that in "http://www.swiftwx.com/warnings/warnings-plugin-matrix.aspx"

 

EDIT 2: This is very odd -- it's only a problem in Firefox! I just checked my page in IE, and everything shows as expected. If I clear my browser cache, the problem get fixed as well. Yet, though, it reappears after several hours.. Anyone heard this quirk? If this is correct, that means that people who read this thread and go to my page, will return and say "Huh? Everything looked just fine to me" since it appears as though it may be a (very wierd) browser bug.

Edited June 13, 2006 by WxGuy1

[nortk]

It seems as though you might have a FireFox extension that is adding things to the file...not on the server end, but as it is downloaded to your computer.

 

You've identified that the problem is not happening with IE. Perhaps when you notice the problem occurring, you could have someone else check with FireFox to see if they notice the problem.

 

In the meantime, you might try selectively uninstalling some of your FireFox extensions to see if you notice a difference.

[stevevan]

Have you looked into any of the interaction of the swiftwx module on your site? (Just an initial guess here.)

[WxGuy1]

Thanks for the thoughts guys! It's gotta be a bug with Firefox... I don't think I've updated any of my extensions lately, so I don't know what would bring about the sudden problem... It seems as though Firefox is caching the file incorrectly; so when it's called, it places the wrong file contents in the layout.css file. Again, if I look at it in IE, or use FTP to download and view the file (layout.css), everything appear correctly... But, when I view the file directly in Firefox, it shows the wrong file contents/code... Very strange. Firefox displays the page correctly again as soon as I upload and rewrite the existing layout.css file (despite that they are the same). I'm not sure how Firefox knows that the file is "new" -- perhaps it compares the "Date Modified" or "Date Created" with the date of the cached file?