Infopoop forum code bugs

[jens g.r. benthien]

are a drag. It's annoying and pissing me off.
(sorry for the rude tone, but it's REALLY bugging me!)

Dear forum staff,

as much as I understand that you are living on advertising - meaning displaying banners with links - I don't accept the fact that you re-direct pages to another server, playing the kinky game 'this-'n-that-server'. What I mean is following:

I've configured our fireall & proxy server so that it filters out all pages and links from www.zymodules.com. Great. But it's really pissing me off that the talkgraphics.infopop.net pages do not display at all, because you've coded the pages the way that they won't display at all if I don't accept banners. In other words: you FORCE me to view your banners.

Proof: if I submit this link:
http://talkgraphics.infopop.net/1/Op...178&f=44419488

the page is directed to:
http://www.zymodules.com/zy0e2eb3fb/9f0ef0b86a8f15c2.js

and right here the fun stops.

Consider this: Internet access in Germany costs 1.5 cents (US) per minute. If I would have to download all banners while doing research etc, it would add up to a nice amount at the end of the month - just to display your fu... banners. See the point?

Why in this world can't you just setup the talkgraphics that it displays the banners and links on the infopop server - without forcing the members to actually view the banners?

Please get rid of this kinky bullshit, or I get rid of this forum. I'd rather pay for a clean coded forum than being forced to display banners!

Charge US$ 2 per month for a membership, but please hammer into your head that times are changing and nobody likes to be forced to do or view or download something he didn't ask for.

Besides this, I can't display most of the Infopop pages anymore - it started about a week ago that weird code appeared in the middle of a page and stopped the complete loading of the pages (experienced with Opera - the browser that sticks 100% to the w3c standards - if you ever remember these standards). You'd better be off to focus on a clean code than to link and re-link and redirect pages...

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

[jens g.r. benthien]

are a drag. It's annoying and pissing me off.
(sorry for the rude tone, but it's REALLY bugging me!)

Dear forum staff,

as much as I understand that you are living on advertising - meaning displaying banners with links - I don't accept the fact that you re-direct pages to another server, playing the kinky game 'this-'n-that-server'. What I mean is following:

I've configured our fireall & proxy server so that it filters out all pages and links from www.zymodules.com. Great. But it's really pissing me off that the talkgraphics.infopop.net pages do not display at all, because you've coded the pages the way that they won't display at all if I don't accept banners. In other words: you FORCE me to view your banners.

Proof: if I submit this link:
http://talkgraphics.infopop.net/1/Op...178&f=44419488

the page is directed to:
http://www.zymodules.com/zy0e2eb3fb/9f0ef0b86a8f15c2.js

and right here the fun stops.

Consider this: Internet access in Germany costs 1.5 cents (US) per minute. If I would have to download all banners while doing research etc, it would add up to a nice amount at the end of the month - just to display your fu... banners. See the point?

Why in this world can't you just setup the talkgraphics that it displays the banners and links on the infopop server - without forcing the members to actually view the banners?

Please get rid of this kinky bullshit, or I get rid of this forum. I'd rather pay for a clean coded forum than being forced to display banners!

Charge US$ 2 per month for a membership, but please hammer into your head that times are changing and nobody likes to be forced to do or view or download something he didn't ask for.

Besides this, I can't display most of the Infopop pages anymore - it started about a week ago that weird code appeared in the middle of a page and stopped the complete loading of the pages (experienced with Opera - the browser that sticks 100% to the w3c standards - if you ever remember these standards). You'd better be off to focus on a clean code than to link and re-link and redirect pages...

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

[jens g.r. benthien]

Here is an example for your lousy code:
page: TalkGraphics.com > TalkGraphics > Xara X

close to the end of the page:
(just in case this will NOT display, please contact me by mail and I will send you the bug in the code via e-mail!)

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="1">OpenTopicâ„¢ 2.0.8< !--CleopatraAztec--></font>

Take a close look the the characters right behind the 'OpenTopic - no wonder the pages won't display correctly.

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

[jens g.r. benthien]

to illustrate how the bug in the code effects the page display, see the pic below.

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

[jens g.r. benthien]

take another close look...

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

[BobInce]

Hi Jens,</p>
You being redirected to zymodules (and the page not displaying since you have blocked zymodules) is a bug in Netscape 4 rather than a deliberate move by infopop to force banners upon us.</p>
If N4 encounters a <code><script src="..."></code> where the src link doesn't work, it unceremoniously bombs out instead of just loading the pages without the script. This is, of course, very stupid. Netscape 6/Mozilla solves it as does Opera of course.</p>
What you're getting with the aborted-halfway-through pages is very odd; I would blame your net connection for stopping in the middle of the page, but I've had no such trouble accessing infopop from Germany myself. Have you tried a traceroute to talkgraphics.infopop.net to see if there's anything obviously wrong between you and there?</p>
As for the odd characters, I'm not sure whether it's technically illegal to put them there but they shouldn't cause the page to go wrong. They don't display as anything on my browser but they don't cause any trouble either. I can see some technical mistakes in the talkgraphics code, but not lifethreateningly major ones.</p>

[jens g.r. benthien]

...Andrew, but I'm not using Netscape - Opera is my favorite browser. Unfortunately the code I pasted there didn't post completely - lots of extended (!) characters are missing here.

BTW, Netscape and MSIE display the pages through the same firewall & proxy server smooht as silk, because they feature a much higher fault tolerance.

Tracert is ok - no problems at all. 99% of the other sites I'm connecting to display just fine - the rest doesn't stick to the w3c standards or has some weird custom coding...

Even my partner in Charlotte, NC has the same problems when using Opera, and he is 'sitting' on our NOC with several T3's and T1's, Cisco 7500 router etc.

Just for the fun of it I've bypassed the firewall / proxy - same results, but the pages stop loading at different levels (after emptying the cache of course) ... strange behavior.

I'm using another connection now, just to keep in touch - the X forum ** IS ** an important playground and communication tool for me ;-}

Thanks for your hints,

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

[traceyp]

jens

I spent some months trying to get Opera to work successfully on my PC but eventually gave up. Yes, Opera is a fast and powerful browser but quite frankly it has very little if any fault tolerance built into it. I would love to use Opera but instead I returned to using Netscape - up to a few weeks ago. However, due to continuing problems with bugs and crashes I even gave that up, and now, much against my better judgement, I use IE5.5.

My problem with Opera was Javascript which just wouldn't work on many sites where it was used. I tried booking a Channel crossing to Calais only to find that Opera would not accept the way the Javascript is written so it wouldn't run the script. In the end I had to resort to Netscape. Yes, in an ideal world, all Javascript (and indeed all code used to write web sites) would be perfect and adhere rigidly to the ECMA standard used by Opera but with so many people writing Javascript to Netscape and MS standards, it is inevitable that there will be code not accepted by Opera. When there are errors however, IE and Netscape have built in a level of fault tolerance in that it seems to ignore (or reject) any code that is not correct (or not recognised) unless it is critical for the operation of the script.

My other half wrote a script and although it did run on IE and Netscape, it was eventually found that there was a minor error in it which he promptly put right - but Opera still would not display the window correctly. As a result I have now junked Opera because it is so touchy with Javascript and, who knows, maybe with other aspects of web code as well. Hence your problem.

Tracey

[Erik Heyninck]

I have and use Opera and IE5.5.

Opera is great for downloads, but is indeed too perfect for the real situation on the web.

And when I browse, or want to visit a site, I don't care about the code being right, but about the fact that I can see the site. Of course, I wish everything would be perfect because IE is not really my first choice, but practically speaking, I can only be happy that I can have two browsers In Windows at the same time.

By the way: I never had any of those bugs on Infopop that you have Jens. The only problem I have here on the forums with Opera is that I can't post an attachment as Opera doen't know what to do.

If you don't work against time, time often works for you.

[jens g.r. benthien]

Tracey,

you are right - JavaScript ** IS ** a big problem for Opera. Those JS with minor bugs won't run at all. Sad truth. To book flights etc I use MS IE though I HATE it due to it's size on the HD, slow response times etc.

Erik,

if you want to post a file, you have to click in the name field for the file you want to upload first, than click the browse button to pick the file on your hard drive. Took a long time to figure out this trick...

Sure, it's a drag to surf and research and have problems with page displays. But believe me, we have sent our complaints to Opera in Norway many times, but there is abolutely NO reaction or feedback.

With this policy they won't be able to gain a much larger market share...

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net