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Using Safari's address bar on my iphone,

chessvariants dot com resulted in a white page plus crash.

When I tried the link 'Summary of Part 1' (in Betza article), again a white page plus crash happened.

I removed what I think is the offending code from global.css and globalindex.css, and I purged these from the cache. So try the homepage again, and bear in mind that you may have to refresh your browser cache. Also, I have used globaltest.css on "Summary of Part 1". This is a copy of the updated global.css under a different filename to guarantee it is not using the old version.

@ Fergus

'Getting More Data' link causes a white page plus crash, on my iphone (you didn't mention it, but I also checked 'Mobility...' link before that link, and that link worked okay for me).

'Impossible by Definition' link worked okay for me, on the other hand.

I have now placed new CSS files in the next two.

"Getting More Data" uses front2.css, which has the code from front.css with some from tail.css.

"Impossible by Definition" uses tail2.css, which has the rest of tail.css.

That's curious, as the new css is mostly in the first one. I'll try to narrow it down further tomorrow.

Hi Fergus.

I had no problem with the first of the next 2 links you asked me to try. However, the 2nd such link caused a crash.

Okay, check the next two links on that page. For these, I have split global.css into two parts. One uses front.css, and the other uses tail.css.

Hi Fergus

The About the Author and Introduction links gave me no problem. However, the Early Attempts at Deriving These Values link caused a White page, i.e. crash.

Hi H.G.

When I type that address into address bar on Safari, I get a White screen, except in the upper left there is 'Hello World!' with some small writing under it. Hope that helps.

I originally got an iphone 11 (since has been updated to be 15, I think).

To check whether the version of iOS might be the problem, I charged up my iPad 2, which runs iOS 9.3.5. Since the iPhone 11 starts with iOS 13 and supports up to iOS 17.4, it is well ahead of my old iPad in what it supports. Using the iPad 2, I tested whether I could reach the site with Safari, Chrome, Opera Mini, Dolphin, and Edge. I could reach it with all of them except Dolphin. In case it was something on the page, I also tried the Ralph Betza page, the hi page, my personal website, and my blog. Of these, only the blog worked. I suspect there is an issue with the DNS server it uses to resolve domain names, though I found no way to change it. When I entered the server's IP address into Dolphin, it did go to the Chess Variant Pages homepage. The only issues with the other browsers were that they didn't recognize this site's HTTPS and required me to confirm that I wanted to see the site, and Dark mode didn't work.

Since the Ralph Betza link worked for you, I have modified the first three links on this page to test what might be wrong.

First, go to https://www.chessvariants.com/d.betza/pieceval/index.html

The "About the Author" link has the header.

The "Introduction" link has the footer.

The "Early Attempts at Deriving These Values" link has the CSS file.

Following the link to each of these files may help narrow down where the problem lies.

You should not see any search results, because you did not request a search. The confusing thing here is that the address bar is used for two pupropses. If you type a URL there (presumably recognized by containing no spaces, and a number of internal dots) it interprets it as a website address, and goes there. If it doesn't recognize what you type as a URL, it sends it to the website of your defaut search engine (apparently Google), and that will then return search results for your request, which will be displayed with clickable links.

If you get no response, it usually means it cannot even connect to the address that you typed.

The reason I put up that page is that when you also suffer a crash loading that, we can systematically start deleting parts of it until it starts working, and determine that way what the offending part was.

[Edit] I now made a page so simple that it should never cause a problem for any browser, at https://chessvariants.com/hi.html . Check if you can see that.

I edited my previous two posts in this thread, in case anyone missed it.

@ Fergus or H.G.

I entered the address H.G. gave me in the post I'm replying to, on my phone, this time in Safari's address bar on top of my iphone's screen - this time the search lasted too long, so I hit the back arrow to stop it.

Yes, that's what I think I've been doing. At least, Firefox and Brave, when I use their Icons on my phone, only offer one place/slot to type into when 'searching' - though Firefox immediately shows a small Google logo in the slot area when I start to enter some text for in that slot of its. So, not sure if an address bar is provided at all.

Not sure how to not involve a search machine.

Do not use the search bar provided on your home screen. Go directly to a browser, then type an URL in its address bar.

@ Fergus (or H.G.)

One person I talked to today, that has an iphone, I asked to type in chessvariants dot com, and they said their phone told them that the website could not be found. They told me they used Safari. This was at my home with its Wifi also, and the person is usually busy and often away from home (my Russian landlady, in a fair mood this morning anyway).

edit: note that when I use Google from Safari on my phone, when I try that web address, the crash message is now preceeded by a yellow CVP Logo.

@ H.G.

When I use Google (from Safari, presumably), typing that address you suggested gives me at least two search results that are fancy links to the CVP homepage - I chose the first one (the second was highlighted as if I visited it already) and a white screen resulted with the usual message implying that a crash was occurring.

Not sure how to not involve a search machine. Brave is the one browser I have on my phone at the moment that I am not at all sure uses any search engine (unless Brave has its own search engine). Sad to say, I know relatively little about mobile phones or even modern computers, still.

Browsers nowadays use their address bar not only for entering web-page addresses, but also for using search terms that should be passed to a search engine. Many years ago you first had to type the address of the search engine's website (like www.google.com) into the address bar, to get to a page where you could then type your search terms on that page. Such pages still exist, but seem to automatically transfer anything you type on them to the browser's address bar, like you were typing there.

Anyway, which search engine would be used to find things you type in the address bar that are not web addresses is usually a browser setting. On FireFox you can specify what your default search engine is. The default setting for this is google.com, which is probably why it displays the Google icon next to the address bar. But you can alter that in the FireFox settings menu. 

I hit the back arrow and brave said it had a '500 Internal Error', whatever that means.

The message probably was '500 Internal Server Error'. When you get such an error it is not your browser's fault; the website you were viewing did produce the page with this error message (which your browser then correctly displays) because something went wrong on that server. In this case that doesn't tell us very much, because we cannot be sure which website we were accessing after using the back button. It could have been the website of the search machine.

Since the errors already occur when you directly type chessvariant.com addresses in the address bar, it is best not to involve any search machines.

Just out of curiosity:

I made a copy of the page souce of the CVP home page, and put that back on the site as http://chessvariants.com/home.html . Can you access that page with your iPhone?

My Firefox icon on my phone, after I click on it, has a Google icon show up on the navigation bar when I try typing things in.

Brave's navigation bar may be independent from Google. However a couple of those URLs I tried (of the 7) seem to lead to never-ending searching (I hit the back arrow after a long time passed). Takes a while to type in all the characters for those URLs for me at least, so I am giving up at least for tonight. Brave also has it's own Icon on my phone.

Vivaldi, on the other hand, did not get an Icon put on my phone that I'm aware of, so I previously used it through Safari/Google by searching for the browser there, if that's what I was doing(!?).

I can gradually ask more and more people at the 2 bars I go to (one more than the other) if they have an iphone that they could use to test if they get CVP site on okay. Eventually someone probably will say they use an iphone. At the moment I am not going to bars much, at least until early April, as I'm on a very tight budget, and just ordering one drink of something isn't much reward for walking one way for about 15 minutes in either case. I'm not sure if anyone I live with has an iphone, but it's hit or miss if our paths cross on a given day for long, if at all.

Now it's back to LinkedIn site for me tonight.

Those 7 pages' addresses all caused website crashed message when I typed them into Google on my iphone (that is, via Safari I guess) and clicked on the first search result link for each that was offered.

I don't even have a Google search bar on my iPad. I just go directly to a browser, and if I already know the URL, I just enter it into the navigation bar of the browser and go to the webpage directly.

I can try entering them again in different browsers later, if you wish.

Yes, enter the URLs directly into the navigation bar of a browser without using Google as an intermediary.

If it still doesn't work for you, I would recommend asking a friend with an iPhone if he can reach this site with it. As far as I can tell through my own tests, the site is working, and you should be able to reach it.

@ Fergus

Those 7 pages' addresses all caused website crashed message when I typed them into Google on my iphone (that is, via Safari I guess) and clicked on the first search result link for each that was offered. I can try entering them again in different browsers later, if you wish.

Right now I have a lot of people I want to try to contact on LinkedIn for much of the rest of the night, so I'll return to CVP site later on.

I got Brave browser next. Could get NHL Scores. Upon searching for chessvariants dot com the engine acted like it was in an endless loop. I hit the back arrow and brave said it had a '500 Internal Error', whatever that means. When I tried the http address for CVP homepage, the engine eventually stopped searching without giving any result, after not too long.

I installed Brave on my iPad and had no problem reaching the site with it.

Do you know of any other browser(s) that are free on Apple phones at least, Fergus?

Firefox is the browser I do most of my website development on, and it is run by a non-profit organization.

Since you were able to reach the Ralph Betza page with no headers or footers on it, I would recommend trying different pages to see what works. Here's a selection of pages that are different enough from each other that maybe something will work.

• https://www.chessvariants.com/alphabet.html
• https://www.chessvariants.com/index/listcomments.php?order=DESC
• https://www.chessvariants.com/index/tags.php
• https://www.chessvariants.com/who/panther
• https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/sac-chess
• https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/
• https://www.chessvariants.com/play/pbm/play.php

edited my last post in case you missed it, Fergus.