Is it just me, or do other subscribers experience problems with their browsers on this bulletin board occasionally displaying the sort of gobbledegook below? I have just hit a personal record of about 1000 lines of this rubbish before finding the post messages right at the bottom. Is there a cure?

(note - every # below is a % but I modified it 'cos the % don't show properly in a post)

067#2C#2C3112#2C#2C3119#2C#2C3128#2C#2C3131#2C#2C3134#2C#2C3150#2C#2C
3500#2C#2C3509#2C#2C3512#2C#2C3530#2C#2C3561#2C#2C3564#2C#2C3572#2C#2C
3577#2C#2C3584#2C#2C3587#2C#2C3603#2C#2C3605#2C#2C3606#2C#2C3629#2C#2C
3647#2C#2C4395#2C#2C4404#2C#2C4412#2C#2C4437#2C#2C4483#2C#2C4586#2C#2C
4629#2C#2C4668#2C#2C4700#2C#2C4761#2C#2C4778#2C#2C4785#2C#2C4799#2C#2C
4801#2C#2C4810#2C; Set-Cookie: miscellany.read=#2C3067#2C#2C3112#2C#2C
3119#2C#2C3128#2C#2C3131#2C#2C3134#2C#2C3150#2C#2C3500#2C#2C3509#2C#2C
3512#2C#2C3530#2C#2C3561#2C#2C3564#2C#2C3572#2C#2C3577#2C#

Hi Marty,
For a long time, I have been getting this kind of nuisance, especially when looking at long threads. I just accepted it, like other imperfections in life, as a price for the priceless AWAD wisdom .

Hi, Marty. Doesn't happen to me, but I can imagine how frustrating it would be.

Yes, as wsieber said. I usually had this problem with the longer posts. The best way to eliminate it is to go straight to SHOW ALL instead of going page by page.
Not too much of an inconvenience since I usually know the last post I read. It is also not a bad idea to show all since you can find previous comments much more easily when all you have to do is scroll up and down.

Thanks wseiber, paulb and belM. I hadn't twigged that it related to choosing a particular page rather than Show All, and my testing of that theory has been pretty inconclusive since the behaviour doesn't appear to be consistent. I always used to select Show All, but recently I've been hitting just the last page if I know that it's a thread I'm pretty much up to date with, in the vain hope that it will load more quickly that way.

After I posted the question here, I decided to mail it to Anu directly. If he comes up with any other helpful suggestions, I'll post them here for all.

I've also noticed that "word wrap" sometimes doesn't happen on posts, i.e. there are some posts, or perhaps it's only on some login sessions, that display with very long text line lengths (several "screens" wide) so that you have to keep scrolling out to the right to read them. Others stay nicely inside the window. Can anyone explain that phenomenon?

Marty, I didn't reply to the % thing because it hasn't happened to me, and I have no clue why it's happening to others. However, I suspect I do have a clue on those long lines: check and see if they occur on a page where someone has posted a longish URL... that will widen the right margin of its own and any subsequent posts. (hope this makes sense; my computer tech vocabulary is nearly nonexistent).

Anna is exactly right, hot links are one loooong word and so there is no place for them to wrap (until the logical end-of-line, and then when they are forced to wrap the link will likely be corrupted). Why this forces the whole page, including previous posts, to become wide I don't know -- seems like a "feature" to me.

Sounds like an oversight on the part of the programmer. If URLs have to stay on one line, then it is easy to program to recognise an URL and automatically alter the line parameters. It would also be v. easy to reset the line length to 'normal' after, but it would require the programmer to think of it. I can quite see that it is an easy thing to miss.

I can't think of any other logical reason for this occurrence - which doesn't mean there isn't one, of course!

... go straight to SHOW ALL instead of going page by page. ...

That's fine, but I have a bit of a problem with "Show All" in that all the "NEW" labels disappear in that mode, and as I usually can't remember where I have got to before, it's a bit aggravating. Anyone else found this particular quirk? Any ideas?

Incidentally, some of the Freds are getting a bit long and hence a bit laborious to load and navigate through. I tend to ignore any thread with over 100 posts. Too impatient, I guess.

lusy

I've been having these errors after I finish reading a thread and try to go back to the forum. I've had to quit netscape a couple of times because I just couldn't get anything to load at all

I've had to quit netscape a couple of times because I just couldn't get anything to load at all

Though I can't confirm it, Netscape could indeed be the problem. I use Internet Explorer (I just think it's better) and I've never had a this problem. The chances that this is the problem are slim, but you could try switching.

I don't think Netscape is the problem. I have experienced it and I use I.E. also. It only seems to occur on the very long posts though.

lusy...why don't you press on the <end> key (some might have to press <ctrl> then <end>). This will get you straight to the bottom and you can simply scroll up to the last post you read (which shouldn't be too high up). Too easy, very quick and you won't miss a thing

why don't you press on the <end> key

Thanks for that, belM. Trouble is I don't have an <end> key!
No matter, I have other ways of getting there. Thanks.

lusy

Marty, and all,

I was talking to my husband about the errors we've been having with the board. He has a pretty good idea of why it seems to be happening and a possible (minor) solution to the problem. I will let him speak for himself...

The 'Set-Cookie: ' is a HTTP header to ask the browser to maintain a state. The name of the cookie is 'miscellany.read', and the value of the cookie is the rest.

The value of the cookie is url-encoded so that special characters can be used in the cookie. To decode the cookie replace the % (or in this case #) with the ASCII character specified by the two digit hexidecimal number following it, for example is a space and , is a comma. So the first bit of the cookie is ",3067,,3112,,3119,,3128,". Considering the context these are probably the numbers of the articles that have been read in this session (the session being the lifetime of the cookie so that it dies when you close the browser, there are also cookies that live longer than the browser and those are stored in a file). Whenever you look at a new article or comment another number gets appended to the cookie.

The problem seems to be that the cookie is too long for the browser (I believe the official limit is still 1024 characters). So when the browser encounters a cookie that is longer than this limit it gets confused, sometimes the problem is presented in an error dialog box and apparently also just inserted into the page.

The easiest solution is to make the session shorter, close the browser, stop reading for a while to let the cookie expire on its own, etc....

Thanks, xara (and "Mr xara"), for the interesting analysis. Trouble is, my addiction to this site is at odds with your suggested solutions - shorter sessions, closing the browser, or (perish the thought!) stopping reading!

- shorter sessions, closing the browser, or (perish the thought!) stopping reading!

Think of of it as meaning more coffe breaks - turn thr browser off, and have a cuppa!

Thanks, Max, but that is one addiction I am trying to do something about!

I'm with Marty on this one. My family is about to stage an intervention since I try to catch up on posts everyday. Close the computer, well sir, I say HA HA HA HA HA (I can't find the emoticon for maniacal laughter tinged with a fleck of folly) to that suggestion.

Plus, being of the “use but do not understand how it works” persuasion, I have NO clue what Mr. xara is saying. I always thought computers worked by magic, now I see they work by baking.

bel,

I can shed only a dim ray of light on Mr xara's culinary reference. As I understnad it, a "cookie" is a little piece of information that gets tucked away in the bowels of your computer (if cookies-in-bowels is not abhorrent imagery!) so that a web site can keep track of some information about you. Typically - and hopefully - innocuous stuff that lets the website customize its content towards your preferences, based on its knowledge from the cookie of what pages/subjects/links you've clicked on. I'm not sure how AWAD is using its cookies - something to do with page numbers of multi-page threads. The above explanation is all my own. I'm sure that some more Web-literate readers, such as Mr xara himself, will have a better explanation, or links to a site that explains it better.

I can speak from my own knowledge on this, so as not to rely to heavily on 'Mr xara' (we love that by the way)

The cookies are used on this site quite a bit. First of all, they keep up with your login id and password. Otherwise the site wouldn't be able to know anything you did. eg. who makes which posts, the who is online bit, etc.. also, the website keeps up with which posts you have read. The problem with the cookies is just that. It makes a cookie when you open your browser or go to the site for the first time since you last opened your browser. Every time you read a post it takes the little NEW label off. It makes a list in the cookies of the ones you have read. So this list gets longer and longer as you go along. When you exit the site (I don't quite understand this, but mostly) it just remembers what time you were last there and which boards you looked at (q&a, miscellaney) so it only has to remember a time for each one, not each individual post. However, the cookie only resets when you close your browser. If you, like me, never close your browser unless something crashes, the list of numbers gets VERY long until it just can't cope anymore. Does that clarify?

I always thought computers worked by magic, now I see they work by baking.

The two arts are not mutually exclusive, you know, belM! Just think of the recipe that the three witches in MacB were trying out. Makes Delia Smith look pretty unadventurous.
I am just wondering what sort of witches brew one needs to make a computer perform? Bugs were a major part of the equation in my steam-driven programming days, and I'm sure they still have great importance. Virusses seem to be the modern main ingredient.

>>I am just wondering what sort of witches brew one needs to make a computer perform?

"eye of newt" would fix things right up. Newts are notorious bug eaters. I'd be willing to "dance naked in the light of the new moon" if it would keep these things from happening, but I think that’s how viruses got started in the first place .

but I think that’s how viruses got started in the first place

No - it's just the way they are passed on