Topic: Posting glitch?

[Scyphi]

Okay, so at the very least, Kaiaatsel's noticed I just posted a whole bunch in the testing forum, testing for glitch I thought was coming from my end. But after trying several things to no avail and not fixing it, it seems this isn't the case, or at the very least, not entirely.

So, the deal is this: for the past several days now, at least a week, I've been having a glitch where everytime I go to post a message, it goes to do so, but then the forum gets stuck trying to do so, constantly saying it's loading the next page, but never doing so until I tell it to refresh the page. At which point it will indeed refresh the page, bringing me back to the posting screen, but also goes ahead and posts the post I wrote (before refreshing the page) without problem. It just alerts me that someone had posted to the forum already while I was writing the message, not realizing that was actually me. So it's not a crippling bug because I can still get my posts out onto the forum, but it is getting a little annoying.

The reason I haven't said anything about it before now is because about the same time this started, I installed a website-blocking program onto my computer (y'know, that blocks out undesirable websites for you?) and while it has met my needs wonderfully, it didn't come without problems, so I thought this glitch might be being caused by this filtering program, and since I figured that if it wasn't, another PD user would notice it, so I waited to see if the subject was going to come up. It didn't, though, so I sat down and made the series of test posts while turning the webfilter on and off, making sure it was truly excluding PD from it's blocking attempts, etc, and see if that fixed anything. Which I really expected it would.

But...it didn't. No matter what I did, the glitch continues as described, no change.

Now for the curious part; I realized I was doing all of this from Firefox, so I figured I'd better test it in other browsers, so I pulled up IE and used it to go to PD for the first time in the history that I've had the browser on this laptop, and posted a message. And on IE, it posts just fine, entirely void without the glitch, and quick and promptly to boot.

So now it seems to be an issue with Firefox that's causing this glitch, but I'm at a loss as to what it could be, to say nothing of the fact that I'm still quite certain that I'm the only one facing this glitch thus far.

[Kaiaatzl]

My curiosity looks up from devouring my corpse and thanks you, then lets me live.
Now you have my mind on your side to make suggestions that are not completely uninformed.  Was that so hard?
I had a very similar problem recently (though it was a little bit more severe).  Try deleting your cookies from PD.net and then log out, log back in, and try posting something.  Oh, and make sure you're logged out on any other computer you may have accessed PD from (say, in a school computer lab).  Part of my problem was that I gone on from a school computer for 1 hour but had logged out before then and PD had never actually logged me off.

Is this only when you post in the forum, does it happen anywhere else on the site?  (the shoutbox, or the gallery...)  For that matter is it just posting, (so would you also have the glitch if you were rating a gallery item, for example?)

[-<WillyP>-]

I use Firefox myself and have never seen this glitch. Maybe a plugin in Firefox?

[TechPro]

Scyphi, have you flushed your Firefox cache recently?   (I'll bet not)

[Kaiaatzl]

Oooh, we can tell who's the dad here.

[Scyphi]

Aw, I hate completely clearing the cache and cookies completely. Things are so much more convenient when the browser remembers where you've been before...

For this very reason, I purposely rig Firefox to clear cookies and cache details whenever the program closes so I can avoid this very issue...but I do have a few sites on as exceptions, including PD, so point taken, and done. Guess we'll test it as soon as I post this message.

Also, rarely do I log on to PD from another computer other than my own, save one of the other computers we have around the house, and that has NEVER caused an issue before, so I doubt that is the cause of it in this instance.

I use Firefox myself and have never seen this glitch. Maybe a plugin in Firefox?

Exactly what I was thinking, which was why I wanted to check and make sure it wasn't the website blocker, the only new add-on I can think of I've given Firefox recently. But we already know how that turned out.

Anyway, here goes nothing...

[Scyphi]

Yeah, no dice, clearing the cookies and cache didn't fix it. Now I feel like I did that for nothing... 

[-<WillyP>-]

Not for nothing, you eliminated a possibility.

[Scyphi]

...well okay, I guess there is that...

[Matthew]

When did it start happening and what changed around that time?

(TechPro will get this:  didn't change anything! Just this, that, and the other thing, but I didn't change anything!)

[Scyphi]

The only thing I can think of is the website blocker I mentioned earlier, but if it IS in some way causing it, I'm not sure how, much less how to get it to stop, at this point. Short of uninstalling it, of course, but I'd rather not have to do that, because despite this posting glitch and a a few other much more minor things that I can live with,  the program has met my expectations and needs.

[-<WillyP>-]

Hmm, well I thought you had said you had disabled it already... I would suggest disabling it, you can always re-enable it later if you want.

[Scyphi]

I DID disable it (it's got an off switch of sorts). That's what all those posts I made in the Testing Area were about. But it doesn't seem to matter if it's on or off, the bug persists. So if it really IS interfering in some way, I would guess it'd take something more complicated than simply switching it off.

Since it didn't seem to matter if it was off or on, I turned it back on again.

[-<WillyP>-]

If it made edits to your registry or host file it might not remove those edits simply by throwing an 'off switch of sorts'.

[Scyphi]

I was afraid you were going to say that, but that would mean that the only way to find out would be to uninstall the darn thing... 

EDIT: FYI, Techpro, your idea didn't work.