Jenkins hosted website: misleading message: "Please activate JavaScript to enable the search functionality"

Question

I have a strange situation here:

A html folder generated by Sphinx is being http-served with two different HTTP-servers:

• a Python-based HTTP server started with python -m SimpleHTTPServer
• a nginx based Jenkins-Server (serving a generated HTML-artifact)

Now when I navigate to the index-pages of each of them my browser (Firefox/Linux + Firefox/Windows) behaves differently when I try to use the search-functionality of this site: The Python-served site works well while the Jenkins/nginx served site tells me to activate JavaScript:

Please activate JavaScript to enable the search functionality

For me this is strange enough since JavaScript is activated in my browser (the other site works as well as any external Sphinx based website).

But it gets even stranger: On another machine running Windows with an Ubuntu VM the Jenkins/nginx served search works well inside the VM (Firefox/Linux) but it doesn't on the native (Windows) browser (Firefox/Windows, same message).

So to me it looks like the problem can't on server side because on at least one machine the search works well and at the same time it can't be a browser issue because the very same browser shows the search functionality on one server while it displays an error message on the other server.

Context->View Page Source for both sites return 100% identical sites, so it looks like the browser reacts differently on the different URLs.

The HTML-snipped which seems to produce the message in question is:

<div id="fallback" class="admonition warning">
  <script type="text/javascript">$('#fallback').hide();</script>
  <p>
    Please activate JavaScript to enable the search functionality
  </p>
</div>

I tried to change/turn off my proxy settings but without effect. Using a different browser didn't help neither.

Do you have some ideas for me?

Answer 1

I can replicate. Are you using ghostery? If I pause ghostery and reload the page, then it works properly. Ghostery sometimes interferes with javascript in weird ways, I've had this happen on other pages too.