I'm having similar problems with my IE 7. However, problems like this are one reason why I switched to Firefox as my main browser last year.

I'm having the same problem, exactly as you've described. Installing Service Pack 3 for XP had no effect. There is a known bug in IE7, and Sitemeter must be tickling it. (It's said to be fixed in IE8, but that's an early beta that I'd rather not install just yet.) For everyday use I prefer IE, but EricH is quite right: it's good to have another browser installed.

I have been told that IE 7 in Windows is not completely html compliant. I run Mac Safari. I saw a mention of the Sitemeter problem today on, I believe, instapundit. It sounds like a very recent problem, perhaps an update issue.

I use firefox. Balkinization and this site often make it freeze. Safari is now my law blog browser.

I have been told that IE 7 in Windows is not completely html compliant.

Understatement of the year. No version of IE has ever been anywhere near standards-compliant. Just use Firefox or another browser.

Gideon7's solution did NOT work for me.

I emailed EV and someone, probably EV, removed Sitemeter. So that makes IE work on our site.

Gideon7 &St. Russell, Try Althouse's site in IE. She's keeping Sitemeter.

Does your fix really work on her site?

FYI: I also experienced a problem with IE7 earlier tonight. I closed down IE and ran a complete Norton antivirus scan. No viruses detectd. Everything seems fine so far since then.

Whoops, spoke too soon. Just tried to access Clayton's blog. Was able to go to his site, but not from there to his blog. There is some problem with the blogs that I have never experienced previously.

Wow I thought it was just my computer, or a Comcast screwup. Can't get to many of my favorite blogs.... some work, some load then say "error can't load" and then go blank. Something's screwed....

I had the same problem as well however I still can't open certain websites like my web based email account or sites like Little Green Footballs or Fark. I could see the sitemeter for those sites, but what about www.mail.com?

@Bill Poser: "No version of IE has ever been anywhere near standards-compliant."

Do you remember the argument about what to do when encountering "almost right" code? The IE approach was to say "well, I know what it's trying to do, so I'll do that". The Firefox crowd cried foul, and claimed the only right thing to do when encountering something that was almost right was to call it wrong and break the site. Failure to do so was, after all, not standards-compliant.

Ironically, both views are compliant; the question is whether almost-right code is "illegal", and must be ignored... or "malformed", which may be corrected at the user agent's option. The CSS standard does not clearly distinguish between the two conditions.

But now here's IE, breaking when served improper code, and the Firefox crowd snorts and says "it's not standards-compliant". Meanwhile, Firefox pukes all over the screen when confronted with trivial applications of the CSS box model, and somehow that's still okay.

More and more of us every day are seeing this politically motivated rhetoric for what it is: bigotry.

I have one trouble with Firefox. In Lucianne, when I read the original article, there is no way back to the list. "close"
exits the whole site.

I'm glad it was fixed. I use IE (on a Vista machine at home, XP at work) and had the same problem both places. The clunky AOL browser had the same problem (I don't use it often but I was desperate) as IE.

However, I did as Gideon7 suggested and have had no problems with the other two sites I checked (Little Green Footballs or Hotair).

So thank you Gideon7 for suggesting something that works.

THANKS!!!

I had complaints from customers that my website wasn't working today. I tried it with IE and it brought up a weird error message. I tried it with Firefox and it was fine.

Called my webhosting company (Network Solutions) and they told me they've had other complaints and it's a high priority but my site down means money lost.

Did a search, came up with this site and put sitemeter.com in my restricted sites because I have sitemeter on my site. That solved the problem for me but I can't expect my customers to put sitemeter.com in their restricted sites. Most of them barely know how to turn on their computers. I removed sitemeter from my pages, all 600 of them but easy enough with a global search and replace using CUTE html and site is working fine

I did save copies of the pages with the sitemeter on it in case they fix the problem soon.

Thanks so much. I am back in business.

Carol

I was having the exact same problem until just now.

Two words: Mozilla Firefox.

Microsoft has had compatibility issues in its web tools and browsers for years, although I'm pretty sure this particular one is inadvertent. If the current problem is caused by buggy JavaScript code from Sitemeter, it's somewhat interesting that Mozilla and Safari engines can either parse or ignore it, but not IE.

Other Microsoft incompatibilities in the past were not always an accident. Way back in the U.S. v. Microsoft case nearly a decade ago, there was a good amount of evidence placed in the record about Microsoft deliberately messing with Internet standards in FrontPage and its other web tools with (according to fairly spectacular admissions from Microsoft internal documents and threats delivered in person to Netscape execs) the intent to "break" competing browsers; in the old days MS did this without any disclosure so that somebody using their web content authoring tools might well inadvertently make their work product Netscape-incompatible. And for many years Microsoft included unnecessary non-standards based ActiveX controls on its own web site to ensure that only IE users could access important things like its Knowledge Base (this latter activity, while boorish, wouldn't be illegal since it's their own site and they can set the terms of access, unless a court adjudicates that it's an essential facility under the antitrust laws). James Gosling of Sun (the inventor of Java) had some really good testimony on MS incompatibilities. And I believe Professor Ed Felton did some work on the incompatibility issue, although the main focus of his trial testimony related to removing the allegedly "integrated" IE engine from Windows.

For the truly curious, Phil Malone at the Harvard cyberlaw clinic would undoubtedly remember all the details (or one could spend days and days of fun wading thru the trial transcripts and D.D.C. Findings of Fact if one were so inclined). For a contra view, I recall Dave Kopel writing some op-eds at the time about how U.S. v. Microsoft showed the Sherman Act needed to be repealed outright, a position he has apparently abandoned with his more recent advocacy of using §1 of the Sherman Act against OPEC.

OK, that's enough Microsoft-bashing for one Saturday morning... sorry for the digression...

I use IE 6 and cannot see Marginal Revolution

Thanks folks. I shut down in frustration last night...

Good info. Clayton's blog still a no go.

I've had this problem accessing the Washington Post's opinion pages.

Gideon7's fix worked for me. Thanks!

Me Too!!! Thanks!!

Caliban Darklock,

Your argument is with yourself or someone else, not me. I have said not a word about the proper handling of "almost right" ill-formed code. If you think that that is the only way in which IE has been non-compliant, you have no idea what you are talking about. For example, IE6 was only 52% compliant with CSS2.1. IE7 improved that by a whopping 2%, attaining 54% compliance. Firefox 1.5 was already at 93%. Opera 9, 96%. Microsoft's non-conformant Java implementation is of course well documented due to the fact that Sun was able to put a stop to it by legal action. My comment that no version of IE has ever been remotely standards compliant was correct, and that is true if we ignore issues pertaining to "almost correct" code. Looks like you're the one with a political chip on his shoulder.