MetaTalk posts tagged with browsers

I didn't even ask for this pony, but I'll take it!

PCup — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 05:40:06 -0800

Same account, two different browsers - my Theme preference isn't respected in both browsers. I like this "feature," so I'm just mentioning it - not requesting a change. I recently noticed that my phone was displaying the Plain theme, but my browser was displaying the Default (blue background) theme. So I decided to do some testing on two different browsers. This could be useful if you like to use one theme on your PC and another on your phone, because you can set up the theme you want for your phone, log in on your phone, then return to your PC and change the theme the one one you want for your PC. As far as I can tell, as long as you stay logged in on your phone it will keep the old theme. Summary of findings: if I'm logged in to the same account on two different browsers (or two different devices), changing the Theme or Font preferences in one browser does not automatically change that preference in a second browser. BUT! If I visit the Preferences page in the second browser, the Preferences page shows all of my newly-saved preferences. It appears that MetaFilter’s back-end saves the Preferences, but the page’s appearance is controlled by cookies and the cookies for each browser don’t get reset until I log out or save preferences in the new browser. Details: (note that in this example I’m using Chrome to make the change and IE to demonstrate that the theme doesn’t change, but it works equally well if I use IE to make the change and then go to Chrome to show that it doesn’t change) 1. Log in to my account (PCup) on Chrome. Theme is Default. 2. Log in to same account (PCup) on Internet Explorer. Theme is Default. 3. In Chrome, go to Preferences, change theme to Plain, hit Save. Return to main page (www.metafilter.com) - it shows the Plain theme. 4. Return to Internet Explorer and navigate around. It still shows the Default theme. Going to ask.metafilter.com doesn't change this, doing a hard refresh (Ctrl + F5) doesn't change it, closing the browser window then re-opening it and returnong to MetaFilter doesn’t change it. As long as I a) stay logged in and b) don’t hit Save on the Preference page (more on that below), IE sticks with the Default theme even though I changed my Theme to Plain in Preferences in Chrome on the same MetaFilter account. 5a. If I log out of MeFi in IE and log back in, then I get the Plain theme. 5b. If I visit the Preferences pages, it shows the correct saved preferences (Plain theme), but the page is still displaying with the Default theme (blue background). So the data (which theme) is correct, but what the browser displays is out of sync with that data. If I don’t touch any of the preferences and hit Save, then IE gets the saved theme (Plain). I’m guessing that when I hit Save a cookie in my browser gets updated and from then on the browser requests the new Theme from the site? I actually like this. I want the Plain theme on my phone and the Default theme on my computer, so as long as I change the setting on one device and not the other and stay logged in then I get that desired behavior. But I’m guessing that this is a border case where if I’m logged in to MeFi on browsers A and B, I can change the Preferences on browser A and the cookie that holds the Preferences on browser B is not changed. Just an interesting border case. And possibly helpful to people who, like me, want different themes on different devices. Anyway, I’m not looking for anything to change, just describing the behavior because it's more interesting than doing my real job. I would like to hear if my theory about why the two browsers using the same account can simultaneously display the different Theme is correct – is it due to cookies not being updated in one of the browsers?

Palin thread ate my browser

dejah420 — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:05:03 -0800

Pony request: Can we please, please, please, do something to ease the burden of the Palin thread? People obviously want to talk about it and it's become sort of a default election thread. It's got to be killing the servers as well as everyone's browsers. I know, for the past few election cycles, Matt has strenuously tried to avoid having a politics.metafilter. A standpoint which I totally understand, but I think perhaps everyone would be better served by coming up with an arena where discussion can continue without punishing our poor beleaguered tech tools. As an aside, can someone delete the westfalia asshattery? There's no reason for that to be the thread killer that it was intended to be.

trying to find an old askme about browser portal thingy

dobbs — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:00:23 -0800

Coulda swore there was an AskMe about a site that would allow you to punch in a URL and see what the site looks likes on different browsers/platforms... but of course I can't find it. Anyone recall this or am I imagining it?

IE 8 update: 1 step forwards 2 steps back 2 steps forwards again.

Artw — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:56:47 -0800

Update on IE 8 standard support - IE will now render in standards mode by default, without any silly meta tag. Phew. I wonder if the collective howl of net outrage (here and practically everywhere else I saw it discussed) had anything to do with it?

Mefi frontpage is blank in Opera 9.23

Foci for Analysis — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:05:21 -0800

I'm using Opera (9.23, Windows NT 5.1; U; sv) and all I see at the Metafilter frontpage is nothing at all (image). Mefi works fine in IE. Whatever has caused this, it must have happened during the past 12 hours.

Metafilter sites not working in Firefox

DetonatedManiac — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:27:49 -0800

I cannot access any of the metafilter sites when using Firefox. It works in IE (what I am using right now) but in firefox I get an error message page that reads as follows: [more inside]

MetaFilthy hates me

caution live frogs — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 07:14:49 -0800

Anyone else getting hit with constant error alerts when using MetaFilthy? I have an "NS_ERR_DOM_INDEX_SIZE_ERR" alert popping up on every thread in FireFox 2.0.0.2, for about the last week or so. (Yes, I reported a bug to the author. Yes, I know he doesn't spend all day every day coding MetaFilthy. I'm just wondering if this is an issue with just me, with a Metafilter re-code of some sort, or problems between MetaFilthy and FF 2.0.0.2.)

Favorites for Opera?

beth — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 20:20:55 -0800

So I guess favoriting is still broken for Opera. (I posted about this on Oct 25th). I dunno if Matt intends to support this feature on Opera or not, but I thought I'd prod anyway to see if the answer might be yes. (Please!)

Yeah, yeah, I'll switch to Firefox, it just crimps my browsing style. It's just not my... favorite.

Getting a bug in the Blue

graymouser — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 12:54:21 -0800

Getting a bug in the Blue (front page & content, on IE) [more inside]

Safari Problem

nathan_teske — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:00:27 -0800

Text fields are rendering oddly in Safari for me...

Opera Layout

bigmusic — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:34:53 -0800

Layout on ask.me, the blue and the grey all seem to be a little messed up on Opera 8.51 since last night. All the content is showing up beneath the side blog boxes (on the blue.)

Question formatting browser bug

WCityMike — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 14:14:03 -0800

A question about American Girl currently on AskMeFi's front page appears to be looking rather funky in MSIE6. (Yes, I know, use Firefox, but I'm on a Windoze machine at work, so that's where I'm noticing it.)

Safari crashing

Mwongozi — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 15:33:29 -0800

Something is causing my Safari 2.0.2 on Mac OS X 10.4.3 to crash after I've typed three or four characters into the "post comment" textarea on any MeFi site.

It doesn't happen with the "Post a thread" textarea, as evidenced by this post...

The menu bar is wacked

Mayor Curley — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 17:25:37 -0800

The menu bar is wacked in Firefox under 10.2. Screenshot inside.

Opera Bugs

lodurr — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 05:49:58 -0800

Opera Post Bug Redux? I swear this was a single post. Here's what I think I did: Typed stuff; hit Preview (to work around the Opera submission bug); hit submit. (Haven't tried to recreate, because I don't want to mess up the thread with more extraneous stuff.)

Firefox and New Tabs

If I Had An Anus — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 07:25:25 -0800

I have my preferences set to open links in a new window, but this should only apply to external links right? When I click [!] on a post, the flag form appears in the same tab (using Firefox obviously, on Windows), but when I hit the "Flag this post" button on the form, the result (including the redirect back to the thread) opens a new tab. I've noticed other situations too where internal metafilter links open in a new tab. Minor, but an annoyance of note.

Spellcheck Bug

melt away — Sat, 14 May 2005 06:36:09 -0800

Malicious Insects: Starting today, as soon as I click Spell Check when posting a comment with Firefox (version 1.03 in Fedora Core 3) my browser immediately crashes. This didn't occur yesterday or previously in the same environment. Also, doesn't happen on my Windows XP machine with Firefox 1.03.

Now that I think about it since I'm on Fedora Core 3 instead of Windows or a Mac, I'll probably just have to live with it.

Something's odd with my question thread.

ArsncHeart — Fri, 13 May 2005 08:47:01 -0800

Something's odd with my question thread. Here's what the bottom of the page looks like in Safari and Firefox. I reset Safari and I'm still getting the same thing.

How do I work this Firefox-thingy again?

xammerboy — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:11:59 -0800

Could there be a customization option for Firefox users to have links open in a new tab?

Hitting back erases question preview

NotMyselfRightNow — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 06:53:59 -0800

When you're previewing a question in AskMeFi, it tells you to hit back on your browser to tweak the question. When you do, the initial text you wrote no longer appears in the box. (Or is this just me?)

Anyone having trouble seeing all of the main page with Mozilla?

e40 — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 09:54:05 -0800

Anyone having trouble seeing all of the main page with Mozilla? I can see all the posts with IE, but with Mozilla (latest) I see one and only one post. Cleared cache, same problem...

AskMe's home page suddenly reverts to June 14.

Smart Dalek — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 17:28:08 -0800

AskMe's home page suddenly reverts to June 14.

Firefox Bug

dash_slot- — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 11:03:48 -0800

IE6 - opens new links in new window [as it's s'posed to];

Firefox 0.9.1 - doesn't.

I take it that's a FF bug, not a Mefi one?

FPPs as unordered lists in html

bingo — Mon, 05 Jul 2004 19:04:36 -0800

Matt, could you make the FPPs be unordered lists in the HTML? I want to be able to use the site with elinks in graphical mode. Just about everything else is kickass, and it loads lightning fast, but all the FPPs end up scrunched together and are very difficult to eyeball-parse. I think this would be a Good Thing, not just for links users, but for general browser cross-compatibility.

Can I open all links in new tabs?

DenOfSizer — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 15:05:39 -0800

Is there a way (currently or hypothetically) to customize my account to open exterior links in a new tab, if I'm using that kind of browser? Just curious.