M$ Refresh Epilepsy

OstapBender

Having a few M$ certifications, I needed something from the MCP site, which led me to send a question to their support mailbox. The message got an auto-reply containing this link to the benefits FAQ:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcpexams/faq/benefits.asp

Knowing that M$ pages don't work well in Firefox, I dusted off IE6 and fired it up. Which caused the browser to go into a blank epilepsy. Confused, I hit Stop and checked out the source. Wow:

<html>

<head>
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=/learning/mcpexams/faq/benefits.mspx">







</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>

In other words, an instruction to refresh itself every 0 seconds. Awesome. I wonder if this was done by a "Microsoft Certified Professional."

fennec

@OstapBender said:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcpexams/faq/benefits.asp
In other words, an instruction to refresh itself
every 0 seconds. Awesome. I wonder if this was done by a "Microsoft Certified Professional."

Impressive. I bet this can really drive the Microsoft web page hit counts sky-high!

quamaretto

I was trying to find that page through the site's menu system... I didn't immediately find it, but did find this.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/offers/insurance/default.mspx

Exam insurance. If you can't pass an MCP Exam the first time, you can be assured of a second chance... for a price.

I can't put my finger on what's wrong with this.

Autonuke

The good news is that Microsoft now has at least one browser-independent web page.

schwomp

Nice find :)

Let us all open up a couple of dozens of tabs each and have them running some days.

Dragnslcr

Impressive. I don't know anything about IIS, so this is just a guess, but maybe the page itself is correct, and the server is misconfigured to have .asp and .mspx point to the same file? There's (sorta) nothing wrong with a meta-refresh time of 0 if it actually goes to a different page.

Benanov

Not just IE

It does the same thing in Firefox too. It's not just IE.

The page you posted redirects to /learning/mcpexams/faq/benefits.mspx which is where the loop occurs.

Albatross

@quamaretto said:

I was trying to find that page through the site's menu system...

Go to any exam page, the "certifications" section of the menu bar on the left, Exams, FAQs. Then click on "Certification Benefits".

fennec

I'm very disappointed to say that it looks like Microsoft has gotten its act together and fixed the page. Ah, well, 'twas fun while it lasted.