topic Re: General Flakiness All Round in Community Site Feedback

General Flakiness All Round

aesmith — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 11:27:41 GMT

Is anyone else finding the forum flakey as hell for the last week or as at least? Issues that I've found include ..

Letting you type a post or reply, then erroring when hitting Post - errors like "invalid token", "SSL length exceeded" and some others I can't remember
When you start to create a reply, the appropriate screen appears and lets you type a couple of words, then clears underneath you and redraws, zapping what you've already typed
(Just found this similar one). Create a new post, appropriate screen appears, get halfway through typing the Subject then bang, screen clears and redraws, zapping some but not all of the subject and moving the cursor into the body part and off the subject line
General timeouts with "server not responding" messages,

Just wondering if this might be why some of the old regulars have dropped out, and why there's a general lack of activity. I've certainly had a few posts and replies that I've carefully typed, only to have them zapped when I tried to submit, generally at that stage I give up and don't retry.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

Anonymous — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 11:32:44 GMT

To be fair I can't say that I have, the forum's looking better since the update the other day and I've not been a victim of anything that you describe. However, one question do you use a Mac?

Re: General Flakiness All Round

aesmith — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 11:48:54 GMT

I've experienced these issues from Windows and Android.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

Anonymous — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 11:53:17 GMT

The reason I was asking as that I use the glass touch pad on my Mac that is quite susceptible to fatfingeritis, so if I'm not careful when using it it can think I'm swiping left or right and dump my current page. Maybe others will comment but for me the site works as expected.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

SpendLessTime — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 12:07:43 GMT

No, not seeing those issues at all. Normally post from a PC running WIndows 10 using Chrome stable browser without issues.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

jab1 — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 12:29:33 GMT

Must say I've not encountered any of that, Tony, but must admit I don't post all that much.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

Anotherone — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 13:34:46 GMT

@aesmith With Windows were you using the Edge browser on Win10? I've not used it much - and not for posting here yet, but I have had an odd few gremlins with it where it either closed or content disappeared when I didn't expect it. My preferred browser at the moment is PaleMoon which I use here.
Although I've only made a few posts recently (none on Tuesday & Wednesday this week), I've not had any of the issues you mentioned.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

aesmith — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 13:41:19 GMT

Right - first try at replying here, composed the reply and hit "Post" ....

Secure Connection Failed

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

aesmith — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 13:43:36 GMT

OK try again. Really need to remember to compose in Notepad and paste into the forum.

Browser is Firefox, 46.0.1 on Windows, and whatever is the current version on Android.

I get that page re-drawing almost every time, I wonder if it's because I'm on a relatively slow connection (4meg), maybe on high speed it's not noticeable as it completes before you start typing. I'll be able to test on Monday.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

Anonymous — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 13:52:11 GMT

@aesmith - Can you explain what you mean by 're-drawing' please.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

rongtw — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 13:57:44 GMT

Is this just another FF 46 problem ? as since i am on FF47 i dont get any errors now .

maybe OP needs to update FF to 47 and try again

Re: General Flakiness All Round

Anonymous — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 14:04:09 GMT

@rongtw, @aesmith - Upgrading to FF 47 is worth a try as I'm running 47.0.1 with no errors, so maybe it's worth a try.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

aesmith — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 14:12:32 GMT

re-drawing

What mean is the issue as follows ..

I click on "Reply"

The reply web page loads completely, with the cursor appearing in the box for the body of the message. A couple of seconds later (just long enough for me to start typing) the page completely refreshes itself, re-drawing the whole page again and zapping anything I've already typed.

If it happens on a new post, after selecting "Start a Topic" the New Topic screen loads and settles down with the cursor in the subject field, then after a second or so it refreshes itself, re-draws the whole page but this time the cursor in in the body of the message not the subject.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

MauriceC — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 14:17:31 GMT

It's probably a mix of the slow download link and FF46.0.1.

FF46 caused all sorts of issues which stabilised after the upgrade to FF47. I'm also on a slow link - 2 Meg on a good day - and with this Forum have learned to wait until the page is fully loaded before attempting to interact with it. 8 - 15 secs is about the norm.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

Anonymous — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 14:26:32 GMT

Now that is weird, are you able to try FF 47 or even another browser, like WaterFox, Chrome or PaleMoon?

Re: General Flakiness All Round

southerner — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 15:38:26 GMT

Is the dropout rate/downturn in traffic linked to the migration to Lithium by any chance? The new site layout sure was a culture shock for desktop users. I only really come on here now if I'm on a tablet or phone as that's what the site appears to have been optimised for 😕

Re: General Flakiness All Round

MauriceC — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 16:29:01 GMT

@aesmith wrote:

Right - first try at replying here, composed the reply and hit "Post" ....

Secure Connection Failed

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.

Whoops! Missed this post earlier. This was a major problem with FF46.0 and FF46.01, I used to see this error several times a day and I've not seen it since upgrading to FF47.

I see others have already suggested this as an option - it should remove many of your problems and enable you / us to focus on anything that occurs?

Re: General Flakiness All Round

aesmith — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 18:33:41 GMT

Thanks. I'm running FF 47.0.1 now, and creating this reply I just had the screen-refresh-zap-what-I've-already-typed issue once again.

Regarding the SSL error, we'll see. I wasn't seeing errors on any other web sites, and I'm not really a fan of sites where you need to run a special browser or special browser version. However I've updated it now and we'll see if it fixes any other the other issues on this forum.

Re: General Flakiness All Round

aesmith — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 18:36:01 GMT

... with this Forum have learned to wait until the page is fully loaded before attempting to interact with it. 8 - 15 secs is about the norm.

Do you mean leave it for 8-15 seconds after the screen has apparently completely loaded? If so that's a hell of a condemnation for a website!

Re: General Flakiness All Round

jab1 — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 22:11:33 GMT

Using Waterfox 64-bit on W7 Home 64 and not having any problem. Couple of seconds max for the reply box to load, and the cursor stays in the reply box with no re-drawing.