Being thrown out of forums (fora?) in Firefox

[Carp37]

Hi- I'm not sure if this is a problem at the planet Catfish end or at my work end. Basically, whenever I open a topic in Firefox (5.0), the topic flashes up, and then immediately closes and says "The requested topic does not exist". This has only occurred since about 2:30 yesterday afternoon (GMT), and I've got in through Internet Explorer OK, but the problem is recurring this morning in Firefox.

[Carp37]

I also get the message "Hacking Attempt" (again in Firefox) if I click on a picture in the Cat-eLog

[Jools]

Is there a #at or something else off at the end of the URL string? For example, the URL of this post is

Code: Select all

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=27871&p=171654#p171654

. Mats recently mentioned his work appeared to exhibit a similar problem.

Can you try another browser, do the same thing and report results to please?


Jools

[Martin S]

And do you really mean Firefox 5.0 - the current release version is 3.5.4.
Probably not relevant, but maybe worth checking.
Martin

[Carp37]

And do you really mean Firefox 5.0 - the current release version is 3.5.4.
Probably not relevant, but maybe worth checking.
Martin

thanks Martin- it might be version 2: this is the string in the "about" section:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14

[Carp37]

Is there a #at or something else off at the end of the URL string? For example, the URL of this post is

Code: Select all

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=27871&p=171654#p171654

. Mats recently mentioned his work appeared to exhibit a similar problem.

Can you try another browser, do the same thing and report results to please?


Jools

This appears to be the issue Jools- it brings up the right URL then shortens it to lose the end of the id:
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3#at
it should be (and starts as) http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... =3&t=27871

[Carp37]

Using Internet Explorer 6 everything works fine, although Firefox was fine until yesterday afternoon as well.

[Jools]

Can you and Mats compare what addons you have in firefox? It's clearly not a site issue as I am using firefox and its fine and indeed the problem started without any change to Planet.

It looks like a software release somewhere affected you both in the same way. That could be anywhere from your proxy server, ISP, firefox, add-ons etc.

Jools

[MatsP]

One common factor appears to be that we have FireFox 2.0.0.X (mine is 2.0.0.17), where I suspect Jools is using 3.X - I never got round to trying it on my home-PC where I use FF 3.0.

My add-ons are:
Google Toolbar 5.0.20090813W
IE View 1.3.1
Microsoft .Net Framework Assistant 1.0
Sage 1.3.8

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Mats

[MatsP]

Just to confirm that this appears to be a problem ONLY with old versions of Firefox, as 3.5.4 works fine [I'm using that right now to write this post, which I couldn't do earlier].

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Mats

[torbanite]

I started seeing this problem yesterday also.
Attempting to view any forum topic would result in the page initially (and briefly) loading OK & being visible for about a second.
However the browser then seems to redirect to a url ending in #at which results in a page saying "the requested topic does not exist"
I'm using FF 2.x (can check the exact version later if desired).
From memory (I'm on a different machine atm) plugins are set to not auto update.
Trying an even older browser (Konqueror) on the same machine worked fine.

[Carp37]

I don't think I've got any of the add-ons Mats mentioned; my work computer also doesn't allow me to download any patches or updates (not strictly accurate- it lets me download them- it just won't let me run the update installation) for any software, so it shouldn't be down to a Firefox update.

It's possible there is some dedicated software on my work machine that interferes with it, but I've only had this problem on Planet Catfish. I'll check that my home PC works OK (with Firefox up to date) as Mats suggests the newer Firefox still works.

[MatsP]

I'm pretty sure no updates where made to firefox lately. I'm lucky enough that although I'm on a relatively closed down corporate network, I can still install software if I want to - but the machine came with FF2.0 pre-installed, and it's not set to auto-update.

I'm relatively sure that something has changed somewhere else - one POSSIBLE culprit is the s9.addthis.com links that appear in the HTML for pages - and "add this" and "#at" have a certain similarity - but that's just some rather random speculation on my side.

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Mats

[Jools]

Yes, but very interestingly, the "add this" code has stopped working too. THAT needs looking at by me and it might be a cause of the other issue.

Jools

[apistomaster]

Recently some Windows XP updates affected some of the functionality of FireFox. FireFox issued some fixes but permissions of your box might have prevented the updates. I don't recall the exact details but Microsoft NET updates were involved.
I'm sure if you Google "Recent XP updates causing problems with FireFox" it would provide more details.

[torbanite]

Recently some Windows XP updates affected some of the functionality of FireFox.

The problem is not confined to Windows users though, which I think lets MicroSoft off the hook.

There is a workaround for this.
If you get hold of the User Agent Switcher Firefox extension and pretend to be using IE 6 when on Planet Catfish, the problem disappears.

This seems to me to suggest that the html served by PC in response to the "proper" user agent string (in my case:

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Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080904 Fedora/2.0.0.14-20080904.fc8.acer Firefox/2.0.0.14

is wonky somehow?

[Jools]

This seems to me to suggest that the html served by PC in response to the "proper" user agent string (in my case:

Code: Select all

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080904 Fedora/2.0.0.14-20080904.fc8.acer Firefox/2.0.0.14

is wonky somehow?

Well, maybe, but it's fine on my Firefox. I don't think we do much with agent testing but there is some code on every page. I will have a look at it when home.

Jools

[MatsP]

It does seem that it's affecting ALL pages [or at least, the homepage (although it still works OK), Cat-eLog, Forum, those are the ones I tried], so a "useragent" related thing may well be part of the problem. But it may also be something in Firefox that "misinterprets" the HTML generated by the PHP.

The first time I noticed was when the "Mystery catfish" picture was posted - that's not to say that it is related of course.

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Mats

[jac]

Thank god I'm reading this thread!!! I've got massive problems too with the forum. I don't know if I'm able to reply but it's worth a shot because I've tried everything else. Jools, I tried to send you an pm but don't know if it worked?

I also am using Firefox without any problems for years now. But suddenly 2 days ago I have the same problem: when I open a thread it opens briefly and then says "this topic/person does not exist".

Now I'm using Safari as browser but also have great problems but I'm however opening threads and even get to write a reply. Don't know if it will show up on the forum tho. Safari keeps on repeating the top www.planetcatfish....ect ect over and over again so it isn't working as it supossed to either.

What could this be??? I'm missing my favorite forum
Please help!! Or let me know what to do.....

[MatsP]

Try getting the latest version of Firefox (3.5.4) - it's probably better than 2.0 anyways - but most importantly, it's working for me.

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Mats

[apistomaster]

I think if you follow Mats advice your problems will go away. I am using the same version without experiencing any problems.

[Jools]

I've also updated (fixed) the add this button code now too.


Jools

[MatsP]

And this appears to have fixed the problems with Firefox 2.0 - at least in very limited testing of viewing one post in the ID forum.

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Mats