XP Pro SP3 and Win 7 display of PN Front page

[#1]

Quote from: colintivy

The Firefox profile change looks a bit daunting. Is it possible to view the profile just to make a comparison between the two?

The profile is just a directory on the filesystem containing all the information,  it's just a matter of comparing the two directories and their content.
This article has information on where they're stored.
It's possible to copy the profiles between machines, and use the -P argument to switch between them, which will also give an idea if the profile is the cause.
About the only profile changes that occur when you upgrade and relaunch is the version checking plugins etc,  or new preferences being saved.

[#2]

Thank as usual. I have laboriously wandered around the Mozilla website and have not found anything relevant to my problem. However I did find indications that there are difficulties with XP SP1-2 and FF but all might be better with SP3, which I have. I have posted a query on their support page.
I am not sure that the profile has much to do with the list of requests where the unnecessary lines occur. It would be nice if it were possible to edit them or to overwrite the XP one with the Win7 one. Any hope of this? I will try to attach the Win7 one here and the XP one later if they would help.

[#3]

Thanks as usual.  I have had a trawl through Mozilla's Support page and found that there are problems with XP but which should be cleared with SP3 which I have installed when it came out. I could not find any other clues. I have posted a query on the problem and await a response from them.
I will try to attach the two pages from the Win7 Firebug listing here because this is what I am on now. I will post from XP separately from that machine for you to see the difference. It would be nice if it were possible to insert the Win7 one into the XP or edit out the incorrect guph in the latter. Any hopes in this directionn?

[#4]

Sorry about the duplication, first one got lost in the electronic aether so I reinvented it for the second one. XP version under construction right now.

[#5]

OH NO! they are not...forgot tthat they were in .doc form. will try to get them in JPG form. There will be a long pause!!!
 

[#6]

Quote from: colintivy

Is it possible to view the profile just to make a comparison between the two?

If you choose "Troubleshooting Information" from the Help menu, there's a list of "Important Modified Preferences".

[#7]

@ ejs,    Thanks for that, will delve when I have got the images to kmilburn.
@ kmilburn, Hope that these will work.
C.

[#8]

The implication from those images is that both machines are being served the same information,  which implies they should be showing the same thing.
If they're not,  something really weird is going on.
Out of curiosity,  what do you get if you visit https://www.plus.net

[#9]

Is this anything to do with it
When I go to the main Plusnet site I get this flashing up before the new page appears - it looks as though there is a problem with the original coding still being there and then being over written with the new page and this happens on every page where there was a change

[#10]

@Oldjim - that's just what the page looks like before the CSS has loaded. It also looks like that if you choose View -> Page Style -> No Style
@colintivy
The end of the second screenshot from XP contains stuff with superfish.com which wasn't in the Win 7 capture. Searching for superfish.com I find things like this thread:
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/878411 - which makes it sound like it's unwanted junk (but not necessarily harmful) that came with some Firefox extension.

[#11]

Answer is that I get the two different front page layouts doing that. Just like it is most times.  
Just now and again the XP does actually come up with the right display and I have assumed that one of the varied places it tries to download from, does have the up to date one on it.
If you look at the XP from Firebug, well down on the second page, you will see the images of the old site are listed. Win7 has not got these images and therefore  never gets down that far and is directed to the correct one. It is all very mysterious but I wonder if it is due to XP taking such a long time to get going, that it delves more deeply into the sites that are down there.
You will note that the Win7 list of requests is not only much shorter that XP, it also has a few that are on XP but are greyed out in Win7 with 304 Not Modified noted. This could make the list even shorter if they are ignored. It would be lovely if it were possible to do a bit of pruning and stop this happening.
Must look at OJ and ejs posts now

[#12]

@ejs,
Ref. your link. I am not using fastfox, Awesome Screenshot nor have I got Converter in my plug-ins. So these cures are not relevant. I have recently loaded Jays Snipping Tool which allowed me to get the captures of the XP list. I do note that Win7 more or less stops at "carousel-active.png" which is not present in the XP list and is a plus.net bit could this be a cure?
@ Oldjim,
Yes this sometimes appears but usually the address stays at www.plus.net while the workings at the bottom left of the page rattles on the range of weird websites generally a bit quick to get them down. Some are versions of plus.net ones, a "google-analytics" one appears and others. I might try to write them down with repeated attempts to get on.
I think that i have stirred the mud a bit too much today. Will now pipe down.
Thanks to you all.
C.

[#13]

At last got a small bit further with the problem. Mozilla Forum came up with the use of the View option for Toolbars where it is possible to choose Text or icon or text&icon. It seems that installing FF 18 on Win 7 laptop it switched to text whereas  in XP it stayed on icon. I have never looked at that area but perhaps I should have.
As far as the XP PN front page is concerned it is clearly not tied up with the above. The listings clearly show the difference between the requests of Win 7 and XP when seeking www.plus.net and I do see that Win 7 does indeed look very briefly at some of the odd websites when choosing which to use for the display of www.plus.net. I suppose that it is possible that the relative slowness of XP makes it unresponsive to some of these sites and ends up with an obsolete one. Funnily this actually continues to work OK which is some comfort. Nobody seems to know how to modify the XP software to agree with that in Win 7 in this respect.