I've been using DHTML Menus on my site for a year without problem. However, the large size of the Javascript files (iemenu.js=47Kb, nsmenu.js=82Kb - with maximum compression) has made me decide I must find a more efficient alternative. However, before doing that I thought I'd try the option to compress the files further with GZIP.

GZIP is installed on my Linux/Apache server and appears to be working well. However, after selecting the "Further Compress using GZIP" option in the menus, re-installing the loader code and uploading all files, the pages load with Javascript errors and the menus do not work.

I've identified that removing the code...

' + (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mac')==-1?".gz":"") + '

immediately following the expression '+ rjsPath + 'iemenu.js' resolves the problem, but, I assume that this prevents the compressed file iemenu.js.gz from being used. I'm guessing here because I freely admit I haven't a clue about Javascript.

Can anyone help here please. I've been very pleased with this product and really don't want to change unless I've really got to, but collegues inform me that there are much more efficient alternatives available and I was hoping that this might be a way of overcoming the slow speed of the product.

Thanks in anticipation.

Unfortunately it is a bug with Internet Explorer and there isn’t much that we can do about it.

There’re web sites (doing a Google search might help) that explain how to setup gzip in Apache so Internet Explorer doesn’t crash, doesn’t produce errors and is able to properly handle compressed content.

If you are unable to make it work (I know some builds of Apache are more problematic than others) you could disable the gzip option in DHTML Menu Builder and then configure Apache so it compresses the .js files for your on demand.

This is how we’re serving the .js files from our server.

You can verify that this is working by using this web site:
http://www.desilva.biz/gzip-test.php

Then, enter the URL to your .js files in the textbox; for example, you can test our .js files using this path:
http://software.xfx.net/menu/iexpmenu.js (you will see how impressive the savings are).