Recent problems and our planned solutions

I'm now getting the same problem with Save Changes after editing a post as I'm still getting with Post Reply - It takes at least one click, and on one edit it took three clicks before it would save the edit.


EDIT: Cor, that posted first click!

 

But I'm experiencing them on two laptops (both less than a year old and both with latest versions of Windows & IE) and they both worked fine before the 'upgrade'.

EDIT: And this also posted first click, plus these last 2 edits also posted first click, so another intermittent problem.

 

I'm now getting great chunks of blue screen plus quoted text is flashing on/off. As I'm using the latest versions of OS & browser that shouldn't be a reason why I'm experiencing these problems to which I can now add great chunks of blue screen, quoted text flashing on/off and scrambled pages.

 

Now seem to be having trouble inserting pics, here's the 2nd one again:

 

The trouble with web applications is that they are expected to work on a very wide range of different configurations. What might work fine for 99% of users may not work at all for 1%, but unless that 1% is on some obscure system, it is a problem. The trouble with us techies, which includes voluntary beta testers, is the "works for me" syndrome. It works on every configuration tested, in test conditions, where the tester is looker for it to work rather than testing for failure, so it passes testing. Once passed, any reports of issues are automatically blamed on either the end user or their machine. Fact is, if you click something and something is supposed to happen as a result, something should happen. Either the expected action should happen, or if it can't for any reason (error 500 from an AJAX call, out of memory, the callback is null, the callback throws an error etc), then the user should get some feedback to indicate that there was a problem. I've never encountered a situation where the browser intermittently completely ignores user actions, except where there is a bug in the code.

 

As previously mentioned, my very latest version of browser intermittently completely ignores users actions. And others have reported this.

 

Thats a browser cache issue, hit F5 and Ctrl

 

I have just managed to post on Internet Explorer......First time for ages.
.So the recent work on the site has helped me.

 

Just as a work-around whilst you know that there is a problem typing long replies you might want to type them into your word processor, or Notepad (and save them) and then Copy & Paste them to GC - that way if it crashes you'll still have a copy to try again from, and hopefully Copy&Paste will allow you to construct replies of more than one sentence?

You don't, of course, know that you are going to lose your post after you start composing your reply you might click on a link to a different page/site, or want to do a Google search, and then when you navigate back your post might be lost (most times not, but sometimes it will, and that false sense of security would then be irritating!)

Just navigate to the thread, the draft will be available for further editing (or click on the floppy-dick icon for DRAFTS and choose" delete")

I use it when I come back to a thread later to finish composing a reply. Of course I never had it before, so didn't use it then, but for important replies etc. I use to pre-prepare them in Notepad just-in-case. Now before I navigate away, during composing, I specifically press SAVE so that my latest text becomes the saved Draft.

I doubt either. There will be a momentary pause whilst it saves, but that is not continuous "effort". I think the sluggishness on each keystroke is more likely that the browser is "waiting" for each keystroke so that it can decide what to do with it, whereas with a more humdrum editor you are just typing into a box and the operating system takes care of editing (and the editing functionality is minimal) [the operating system doing it is very efficienct, programatically doing it is slower, even more so when the program part is in a web page than, say, and application - the increasing levels of abstraction as you move from Operating System to Application Program and then program-snippet embedded in a web page is what causes the inefficiency / extra horsepower requirement]. The editor we had before was probably half way between operating-system and good WYSIWYG. However, it was flawed in several respects. I had read good things about the new one (its not restricted to being used in this forum's software, its available and is used on lots of sites) but had never actually used it before ... but turns out there are issues (or possibly/hopefully just teething troubles) with this one too.

My best guess is that, in addition to the new editor checking each keystroke, something else is also doing that, do each keystroke is being passed around the houses. Perhaps some sort of malware checked is testing that there is nothing dubious going on with keystrokes, or maybe, god forbid, some sort of password sniffing malware is checking the keystrokes ...

Force a SAVE DRAFT so you can go away and come back later (and be sure the Draft saved was latest-version rather than relying on auto-save every N seconds). "go away" can be to navigate away ... or turn off your computer etc. and come back and finish off tomorrow.

I have used DELETE where I wrote something, changed my mind, didn't post it, then later on in the thread (maybe days later) I then wanted to reply but was presented with my earlier draft - which I then deleted and composed a brand new reply instead.

On all the AJAX predictive-text stuff we have built it would be a big deal. We delay providing predictive-text suggestions until 3 (or so) characters have been typed because the server effort for "Every name beginning with X" is a much more onerous database query compared to "Everything beginning with XYZ". Chrome has an Alt-F "Find" which has a sort-of predictive-search. Use it on a multi-page PDF file and the moment you press the first character there is then a wait (can be minutes) whilst it finds, and highlights, every single matching occurrence of that letter in the whole document ... after you've typed several more characters, and waited a couple more eternities, the thing then becomes useful.

Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, if you are going to have AJAX Predictive-text after minimum of 3 characters then you need to enforce that usernames have a minimum of 3 characters too Bit late for that to happen though ...

Big reply ... I've pressed SAVE DRAFT and will only then press REPLY ... just in case

 

Has further work been carried out to the site as I do not seem to be having any problems now using IE10? I haven't done a lot of posting just a couple of three post previously but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of the site freezing on me as it did before! No closing down of IE after the first sentence or so!


Edit: if that is the case then Thank you for your effort in bringing this about.

 

I thought I saw Rich in the office earlier, can't be sure as he was wearing dark glasses and a Fez. He may have done something.

 

Test (edit to follow shortly)


EDIT: Posting is now working on first click of the button. For the first time since the upgrade it worked with another post, and now it's worked here. If no further edits to this post it will mean they are now also posting 'first click'.