Brief JavaScript wibble

June 16, 2009 7:43 AM

Not sure if this is a site bug or a Firefox thing, but figured I'd report it. Here's what happened just now

• favorited billysumday's Iran FPP.
• flagged billysumday's Iran FPP.
• favorited orville sash's Iran FPP.
• got the "This Feature Requires JavaScript" error page
• repeated favorite a couple of times to verify error.
• flagged orville sash's Iran FPP, which worked.
• favorited orville sash's Iran FPP, and this time it worked. It looks like whatever froze up favorites unclogged itself when I opened the dropdown, but I am not skilled enough in the ways of JS to know whether it's local or not. And obviously they were both "fantastic post" flags.

posted by catlet to Bugs at 7:43 AM (32 comments total)

I've also seen that 'This Feature Requires JavaScript' message before. I always figured that something was timing out (happens more at work, where we've been having other network-slowdown issues, probably due to a bunch of teenagers who have recently learned about file-sharing. But I digress). I probably know even less about JS than you do.
posted by box at 7:48 AM on June 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

Me too. Usually reloading fixes the problem.
posted by grouse at 7:55 AM on June 16, 2009

Thanks for the report. I don't know what's causing that offhand. If you get the problem consistently, you might try opening up the Error console after it happens. (You get there from the top menu Tools -> Error Console.) That will list any JavaScript errors you've encountered for any of the sites you've visited recently. See if there are any MetaFilter-related errors and send them my way—that might help me see what's going on in your case specifically.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:12 AM on June 16, 2009

Thanks, pb. Mailing you two - they're CSS-related.
posted by catlet at 8:15 AM on June 16, 2009

I've had mefi.us hang on me once or twice so far, producing similar problems.
Small, unrelated little thing—hardly a bug—but the date line in MetaTalk hangs out in the middle of the page whenever I stretch the browser window out to full widescreen.
posted by carsonb at 8:22 AM on June 16, 2009

I've had this problem (very intermittently) for at least weeks, maybe a couple of months. Certainly before the advent of mefi.us.
posted by grouse at 8:41 AM on June 16, 2009

This has also happened to me a few times in the last few days. I was blaming my Internet connection, though. I guess it isn't that?
posted by rtha at 8:56 AM on June 16, 2009

happened to me once or twice, i blamed my work computer/firewall/etc. (i.e., i figured it was on my end, not the site's.)
posted by msconduct at 8:58 AM on June 16, 2009

Same here, occasionally. Mildly annoying, is all.
posted by Night_owl at 9:09 AM on June 16, 2009

I've also been seeing "This Feature Requires JavaScript" page frequently. Probably once a day. I'd been assuming it was the Opera beta balling up, but I guess not.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:40 AM on June 16, 2009

BTW, catlet, nice bug report.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:41 AM on June 16, 2009

Datapoint: I've had this problem in the past on my home computer, even though I set NoScript to allow all things MeFi-necessary. It wasn't constant, just intermittent when I would favorite something. I haven't seen it in a while, so I figure whatever issue had passed.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:46 AM on June 16, 2009

five fresh fish: "BTW, catlet, nice bug report."

Just for future reference, a "nice" bug report requires all of the following:
• Browser version
• List of browser plugins and addons installed
• List of GreaseMonkey scripts installed
• Operating System and version
• List of OS kernel patches applied
• CPU manufacturer, model, and speed
• RAM timing
• Date and time of day of each step in RFC-3339 format
• What you're wearing
• First and last name and country of citizenship for each person in the room with you (if the room is greater than 8m x 8m, only list the people within 5m of the computer).

Thank you.
posted by Plutor at 9:59 AM on June 16, 2009 [7 favorites]

wah wah wibble
posted by roll truck roll at 10:00 AM on June 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

Hey, as a totally sidelong (but as long as we're here) error report—The "best answer" check marks aren't showing up in my recent activity or sidebar feed. Firefox 3.0.10
posted by klangklangston at 10:07 AM on June 16, 2009

klangklangston, go here. Do you see the check mark? Hopefully yes. Now go back to your sidebar and it should be there.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:10 AM on June 16, 2009

For anyone seeing the "No JavaScript" page even though JavaScript is on—try waiting for the entire page to load before favoriting/flagging and see if that clears up the problem. If you try to add a favorite before the whole page has loaded, you can get some wonky behavior. Long threads that take a while to fully load are probably the culprit here.

If that's the case we can think about some ways to disable favoriting until the whole page is loaded either by popping up a message, or not showing favorite controls until they're ready to go.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:14 AM on June 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

Bing! It's there now! (That was odd. I wonder what happened.)
posted by klangklangston at 10:59 AM on June 16, 2009

I wonder what happened.

I don't know why this happens. From time to time browsers can't fetch an image for whatever reason, it remembers that it couldn't fetch that image, and then it just gives up and stops trying to get the image. But if you load the image directly you get it in your browser cache and all is well.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:04 AM on June 16, 2009

If that's the case we can think about some ways to disable favoriting until the whole page is loaded...

Yahoo's YUI libraries supports omdomready and similar stuff for very convenient tracking of things like "is my entire page loaded yet?" with cross-browser support. Other libraries do, too, but that's the one I'm familiar with.
posted by davejay at 12:12 PM on June 16, 2009

er, ONdomready. omdomready is a helpful js-based medidation.
posted by davejay at 12:12 PM on June 16, 2009

Have you tried rebloobling or jogging your fnord? That always fixes it for me.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:43 PM on June 16, 2009

I've had the same problem a couple times (This Feature Requires JavaScript). Cleared my cache and that seemed to do the trick. I don't know if that's what really fixed it, but that's what y'all say to do regarding bug reports.
posted by deborah at 2:05 PM on June 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

If DNS for .us takes a little longer to resolve, the javascript libraries might not be loaded as quickly. I too occasionally get this, usually if I try an action too soon after page load.
posted by cj_ at 2:42 PM on June 16, 2009

klangklangston: "Bing! It's there now!"

Score one for Microsoft.
posted by boo_radley at 4:17 PM on June 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

Plutor: "Just for future reference, a "nice" bug report requires all of the following:"

Call that complete, do you? Honestly, how do you expect to troubleshoot anything if you don't know the temperature and humidity of the room?
posted by boo_radley at 4:19 PM on June 16, 2009

I blame the network.
posted by iamabot at 4:43 PM on June 16, 2009

Just added a quick note to the favoriting and flagging JavaScript that says, "The page is still loading, please wait to add favorites" (or flags) if you try to add either before the entire page has loaded. Hopefully that will help clear up the confusion.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:59 PM on June 16, 2009

boo_radley: "Plutor: "Call that complete, do you? Honestly, how do you expect to troubleshoot anything if you don't know the temperature and humidity of the room?"

I'm a programmer. I'll leave the little stuff to the sysadmins.
ooh, burn
posted by Plutor at 3:57 AM on June 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

I get the Javascript required page every time. I don't have javascript disabled, or scripts blocked, or AdBlock running, or anything.
posted by [@I][:+:][@I] at 11:45 AM on June 17, 2009

Can you take a look at your Error Console and see if you have any JavaScript errors? You can open that from the top menu of Firefox with Tools -> Error Console. Click the "Errors" tab and take a look around for anything coming from metafilter.com. If you have JavaScript enabled and you're seeing the "No JavaScript" page there should be an error somewhere along the line.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:49 AM on June 17, 2009

I get the "this feature requires javascript" whenever I try to favorite something with a right-click (which opens a new tab) instead of a left click. I know it's a mistake I'm making- - might possibly be what others are doing, as well.
posted by notsnot at 12:51 PM on June 17, 2009