The Problem:

SharePoint page titles when using Ajax may turn to square icons. This is the rendering of the title tag in the masterpage, or where the page title is specified. A normal SharePoint masterpage specifies the title on 3 lines, the first line is for the opening tag, second line contains the content place holder for page title, and the 3^rd line in the masterpage’s title is for the closing title tag. You get something that looks like this:

Basically, the tabs indenting “Home” are rendered as nothing in IE7 Page Title, but in the tab title, they are rendered as 3 little squares.

The Solution:

Put the title tag on one line! That’s it! No need for JavaScript or anything else when using Ajax on a page! Just edit the CORRECT masterpage, (For Publishing Portal, the default is BlueBand.master, for Team and Collaboration sites, it’s Default.master) I made the mistake of editing Default.Master for the fix and was using a Publishing Portal, and didn’t see my changes!

Here’s the code fix:

Having ANY tabs in your source code will render nothing for your page title. You MAY use spaces, but NOT formatting tabs.