Tower on Fire thingy screwing up the site?

[Ran]

That is interesting. Thanks for that info. I mean, as I've said, I've repeatedly tried to reproduce the issue and cannot do so, either from my IP here in Sweden, or a proxy based in the US. So now it seems possible that only certain IP ranges/ISPs are getting this ... for some reason. I am going to experiment and try other proxies and see if I can get it to happen.

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

I get it too and it makes me nuts! refreshing helps but not always. Most of the time I give up. I'm sure its the website too because I've tried multiple browsers and computers and still have the problem.

[boojam]

That is interesting. Thanks for that info. I mean, as I've said, I've repeatedly tried to reproduce the issue and cannot do so, either from my IP here in Sweden, or a proxy based in the US. So now it seems possible that only certain IP ranges/ISPs are getting this ... for some reason. I am going to experiment and try other proxies and see if I can get it to happen.

I am still getting the glitches.

We have this tread with people who get this problem , but really there are an awful lot of people who are forum uses, would be interesting to know how many get it?

When I returned home yesterday from not having the problem when traveling, its the firs thing that popped up. I reset the wireless modem, nope no good.

It's across my two PC's, my Mac Air and my IPAD, tho I have a Mac Pro , but don't use it much, it does not occur there. I have seen it on my wife's IMAC but she's not a forum member, just my testing.

Browsers FireFox, IE, and Crome, I don't use any others.

I would be curious if anybody with a Linux box sees it?

I keep seeing the pattern that the page loads, then they seems to be the overlay of the tower,(this is left hand side bar stuff), then , I think, there is a standard overlay of information starting with THE LATEST NEWS, then on top of this, at the top of the side bar an ad, this ad changes on refresh. I could swear that it's when the ad overlay loads things go abel sugar.

I can do cave man HTML but can't read the huge set of code when I do inspect element on the side bar overlays.

I keep wondering if the injection of an ad on the left side bar conflicts with the ad injected at the bottom of the page.

Why is it so idiosyncratic? You don't see it. Only a subset of us do?

Of course I can't explain why right now I have a well behaved page!

[Ran]

Boojam, could you try using some sort of proxy and see if the problem goes away then?

Also... one possiblity: next time it happens, please just view page source and copy and paste all of that into a site like textuploader.com.

If enough people do it when they get the problem, maybe I can find some common thread to explain the problem.

[Ser Creighton]

Ok this is just nuts, for me my PC is fine no problem. Tried 3 different laptops and no problem, I am currently using my Xbox one to post this message. Which aside from being a pain in the ass to type is really cool. Thing is everything works but my ipad, firefox, and I am using explorer on xbox and its just fine. I got the grey screen the first time loaded the page, but after that perfect. In fact the site loads faster and runs smoother on thing than anything else I have tried. So what do we all have in common?

[boojam]

Boojam, could you try using some sort of proxy and see if the problem goes away then?

Also... one possiblity: next time it happens, please just view page source and copy and paste all of that into a site like textuploader.com.

If enough people do it when they get the problem, maybe I can find some common thread to explain the problem.

An anonymous proxy does load. I notice that using that IP there are no 'overlay' advertisements on the side and at the bottom of the page.

Do you get overlay ads for cars and things when you load the page?

May be browser configuration?

Adware?

Right at the moment IE in Windows is loading correctly, while Firefox is not loading.

Crazy thing is why with my IP would it be stochastic?

[JonSnow4President]

Hmm, odd. Wasn't working EVERY time after a Windows update somehow removed my ad block. Now, working just fine after I ran malwarebytes.

So really. I've been moving around for 30 minutes now. It had to be something malwarebytes cleared off.

https://www.malwarebytes.org/ if you want it yourself (remember there's a toolbar or two you need to uncheck on the installation setup, but it's appeared to be clean for me, and well reviewed that I saw).

[boojam]

As of Feb. 17 , for now, Firefox is working with only one reload per page display.

[Sub_Zero94]

I'm using Chrome and IE and getting it pretty regularly I would say for the last 7-10 days . Laptop and Windows 8

[Ran]

Again, someone please use textuploader or something else to let me see the source. We can't figure out what's going on otherwise.

[DreamSongs]

This morning, its working OK in Chrome. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[DreamSongs]

Spoke too soon. http://textuploader.com/6unb

[Ran]

I think that's the javascript console. Next time it happens, can you right click anywhere on the page and select View Source or View Page Source? That will help more as I'll be able to see all elements that it tries to load.

[boojam]

OK here is a version where both an ad and the Tower are to the left but do not overlap one another, this freezes the page on the right.

(Firefox Windows 7)

http://txt.do/6frd

[boojam]

And... here is one where , in Firefox, Windows 7, there is a blank page and only the tower on the left.

http://txt.do/6f0t

[boojam]

This issue is still plaguing me. Right now in Windows 7 using Firefox I am totally locked out.

On the other hand IE and Safari with refresh work.

Anybody get a handle on this problem?

[Ran]

Thanks. I have finally managed to replicate it.... but not solve it. It seems to be an issue related to loading speed. I've passed on my findings to the network.

[sticks]

Hi Ran,

I saw the issue myself over the last few hours. There seem to be two types of symptoms. The issue also seems to affect the www.westeros.org rendering, which is how I found the issue. The following is a bit of work troubleshooting the given javascript (and IPBoard's jQuery package) with some theory on what the issue is.

Note: I have not tried this thoroughly, only on my own computer.

The first type of symptom looks like a bad overlay in which the side header images are pushed into the middle content, (an element with id=MainMiddleFix), and the page links of the main visible area left over aren't clickable. I've found that the following javascript commands can force the problem to go away:

jQuery('#MainLeftFix').css('left','-200px');

jQuery('#MainMiddleFix').css('left','0px').css('z-index','-20');

To use this, paste the commands into the browser's Javascript console. On Chrome, it should appear in the C-Shift-I hotkey or View->Developer->Developer Tools menu option. Firefox users can go to Tools->Web Developer->Web Console. Different browsers may require the "Web Development" knobs turned on.

Paste the above javascript code into the console and, on my machine, the links become clickable again.

The second type of problem is worse, because it looks like a blank page save for the Tower image on the left-hand side. Users may see the sidebar proper with links a half-second before it disappears. I've found the following works in the same javascript console:

jQuery('#Main').css('height','12500px');

jQuery('#MainMiddle').css('width','1024px').css('overflow','visible');

jQuery('#MainMiddle').css('top','0px').css('position','absolute');

jQuery('#MainMiddleInner').css('width','100%');

jQuery('#MainLeftFix').css('z-index','-20');

jQuery('.SidebarAd').css('float','left');

On my one test machine (and granted, I have only tested this for about an hour) the page is re-rendered but the main navigation has been changed into a dropdown menu. More on this later. In the first case, a special div is intercepting mouse clicks because it's in "front" of the links, and the header location was shifted. In the latter, the page is having its content hidden by a very long sidebar with the contents offscreen.

The two problems seem to be symptoms from bad advertisements being served over AdSense or eTrust or omtrdc. Both of the js hacks described above are certainly NOT solutions but it suggests that a possible root cause might a bad javascript clean-up on the part of the advertisements.

I note that disabling Adobe Flash for the asoiaf.westeros.org domain does not make the problem go away--it appears that some js stuff is happening without regard to Flash being activated. Further, the entire website page content appears to have loaded anyway, which makes the case for bad (or incomplete) javascript being the culprit. The fact that the main navigation button turns into dropdown might be an effect from the javascript sensing the state of the width of the container it's in was changed.

The two commands above can help troubleshoot the issue on the serving side, by unwinding the problem. (I should say, though, that the fixes above aren't necessarily the reverse path that the page took to render badly.)

Unfortunately, I've run to the end of my abilities here. The real root cause is difficult to track down without seeing what is happening on the server side. And unwrapping everyone's scripts is very, very tedious.

If I had to guess, it would be that Google Ads is pushing a select and lucky few users bad advertisements with wonky code. Likely their js code plays around with page elements and misfires on the ad's parent() elements or is using an elem name that already exists. Because of the algorithms used with different ad vendors, client IP addresses are less important and Big Data "profiles" are used to sense which ads to push, so geographic region isn't as important. The ones being pushed at my location are through omtrdc.net and etrust and of course Google. (One can verify this by looking at the javascript networking console.) Apple Safari seems to work perfectly with this site--and its console messages indicate many, many sites being blocked that are trying to write to the page resources, where Chromium and Firefox area both liberal.

It is also possible that some bit of code is failing to load, but this doesn't seem likely since there are more users without the problem than with. Of course, it's still difficult to tell since I have no easy way to analyze where the ads are coming from and which failures always happen.

What to do about this--there is not much one can do from the client end. It is possible, though, for users to do one of the following if either problem happens.

If the page loads but the left Sidebar image has shifted to the right and right-hand links are unresponsive, try loading this into the javascript console:

jQuery('#MainLeftFix').css('left','-200px');

jQuery('#MainMiddleFix').css('left','0px').css('z-index','-20');

If the page loads only a left-hand Sidebar image with no links and the rest of the page is blank, try:

jQuery('#Main').css('height','12500px');

jQuery('#MainMiddle').css('width','1024px').css('overflow','visible');

jQuery('#MainMiddle').css('top','0px').css('position','absolute');

jQuery('#MainMiddleInner').css('width','100%');

jQuery('#MainLeftFix').css('z-index','-20');

jQuery('.SidebarAd').css('float','left');

I guess I could wrap that into an if {} else if {} statement, but the problem is that loading a good control page to test with is almost impossible, and it's already late for me. :)

Good luck.

--

ETA: Some of the above javascript does not linewrap on this page well, so I split it up.

[Ran]

Sticks,

Thanks so much. We've gotten one suggestion that we're trying out to see if it works.

[Ran]

Any improvement, folks?