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I don't know what I'm looking for or doing to get a 'desktop version of the homepage'.

I tried first getting a desktop version of Google on my phone, then typed chessvariants dot com. After that I had many search results from CVP site, including a fancy link to the homepage. I clicked on that and a 'Crash' resulted, same sort of message as before. edit: except this time on the way back to the Google homepage, the 'Website Crashed' message beneath the reduced white screen was preceeded by a CVP Yellow Logo

I edited my last post Fergus, possibly with a vital detail.

edit: I later tried typing chessvariants dot com into Google on my phone, then requested the desktop version of that address without yet clicking on it. I then had the same experience as in my previous post when I clicked on that address (that is, many CVP search results showed, etc.).

edit2: later still I got the desktop version (on my phone, starting from Google) of https colon //chessvariants dot com, and had the same sort of experience (that is, many CVP search results showed, etc.).

I would suspect an unsupported or incorrectly implemented html feature in the browser, rather than a javascript error. If I include buggy javascript on a page the page displays as it was loaded (i.e. as you would expect from the Page Source), but the scrpt just stops working (no longer modifying the page) at the point of the bug (or did not do anything at all, if it contained a syntax error), and the page won't react to mouse clicks. In the console (popping up by hitting the F12 key in FireFox, in the console tab) I can then see the error message, and the point in the javascript source code where the error occurred.

The browser message that a page crashed I only saw when I intentionally terminate the corresponding firefox.exe process with the Windows task manager. (Sometimes I have to do that, when pages try to grab more memory than is physically available, and cause my entire PC to practically grind to a halt.)

I have no Apple devices, so I don't know how to do the corresponding things in Apple browsers.

Requesting the desktop version is something to do inside the browser while already on the web page. For Safari, you can find this option by tapping on AA on the left side of the navigation bar.

Yes, I read about AA symbol before I reported to you last night. The problem as I saw it was, if I need to already be on the homepage on my phone to request the desktop version of it, that is currently impossible since I cannot get to that web page before a Crash occurs in making the very attempt to get there.

Is it crashing the whole browser? I thought the browser would still be there with the website not working.

A browser is a multi-threaded program; If I run FireFox on my PC with many tabs open, I see many firefox.exe processes in the task manager. (This is on Windows 7, I think in later Windows you need the Resource Manager to see that.) It seems that each is dedicated to one tab: if I kill it through the task manager, the page that was shown in the corresponding tab disappears, and is replaced by white page with a message like "Sorry, it seems this page crashed", and a blue button that offers you to reload it. Other tabs are not affected. I suppose the same message would be shown if the process terminated through some internal bug.

I guess when a website is thought to have crashed, and put on a white screen on my phone, perhaps Google is no longer in effect as my browser, somehow. For later, when I reduce the White screen as I described in a previous post, the White screen is reduced to half the size of a new grey screen that it is put onto.

When I delete the reduced White screen, I am taken to a new page where listed are a few frequently visited places I go to on my phone, including Google (a fresh icon with a colorful 'G' is given for it, as well as an icon for Google as last used, apparently, that would restore the White page if I choose to click on that one - which I've done before just to see what would happen). To complete my journey back to the Google homepage, I click on the fresh icon for Google.

Fergus, this post I am replying to is relevant to my next-to-latest post in this thread, as far as describing how I reduce in size the White screen that happens after a crash of a website on Google (on my phone).

perhaps Google is no longer in effect as my browser

Google is not a browser. It is a search engine that is accessible from any browser. The default browser on the iPhone is Safari. Google has its own browser, called Chrome, but you are not using it.

For later, when I reduce the White screen as I described in a previous post, the White screen is reduced to half the size of a new grey screen that it is put onto.

Skip that step and go straight to requesting the desktop website.

Or try some different browsers and see if any of them work. Among popular free browsers, I would recommend trying Firefox, Edge, or Brave. There are various others you could try if these don't work.

I requested the desktop website for the CVP homepage after the White page appeared (i.e. as a result my Google search with my phone), but the grey screen with reduced white screen on it (plus crash message) appeared.

I then soon got Firefox for my phone (apparently free). I could get a summary of NHL scores when I searched using FIrefox (don't know if it acted as the search engine, too, if that's possible). However, when I searched for chessvariants dot com, after a bit of a wait an entirely black screen appeared, with no sort of error message. The same thing happened when I used the http address for the CVP homepage.

I need to take a break from my hours-long laptop use now, but maybe that helped you somehow, I hope.

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.

Microsoft Edge I dislike enough already, in using as the browser for my laptop (I've never finished completely installing it, as it keeps trying to trick me and many other people into). I went to get it for free use on my phone as a browser, but right from the start it wanted some information, unusually(?), such as my email address. Sorry, but I then balked at getting it. Do you know of any other browser(s) that are free on Apple phones at least, Fergus?

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

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

@ 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.

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.

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.

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?

@ 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.

@ 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.

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.

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.

@ 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.

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