Today, I did a very mundane thing that I do all the time. Heaven forbid... I created a GIF image!

I uploaded it to the file manager, and all was fine. Later in the day, I noticed that the banner wasn't appearing on the website - or so I thought. Turns out, it is appearing just fine in ALL browsers EXCEPT IE7, where it appears just fine in HTTPS, but not HTTP. Even more odd... we could right click on the invisible image to see it's properties when not in secure mode.

Again, this is happening only in IE7 - and on five different workstations that have IE7. I have reset all browser settings, which did not resolve it.

Anyone know why a GIF image would appear in HTTPS, but not HTTP - and only in IE7?

OMG....

I just spent two hours of my day and pestered numerous people only to discover on my own that Kaspersky sent through an update to their commercial software overnight - which apparently added something called "banner blocker" as an option. It was turned on by default, one of the "words" that it searches for in GIF images is "banner." Well... guess in what various forms all of our sale graphic images have all been named...

So... I renamed it something else - and poof... there was the graphic.

Geez!

The reason it happened to only be happening in IE7 for us, is that half of our workstations (that happen to be on IE6) have a different version of Kaspersky that does not have this new "banner blocker." And, it wasn't happening in Safari or Firefox, because those are Mac stations (no virus/privacy software).

I'll be emailing Kaspersky to inform them of how much time I wasted on this today. Not that they will care.

So, a lesson to all web business owners... DON'T name any of your graphics "banner," or include the word "banner" in any part of any filename or URL.

Thanks for the heads up. Off to see what I have called mine.

ETA: I called it banner.jpg of course.

I have noticed that trend micro does the same at times.

I would suggest not naming your images:
banner.xxx
ad.xxx
store.xxx
logo.xxx
sales.xxx
sale.xxx
special.xxx
buy.xxx

Trend Micro seems to block images with those names.

I just name mine more specifically like the name of the product(s) in the image. Seems to save this headache.
Guess to many spammers out there have abused these names too much and now we all get punished if we use them.