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Jeruba's avatar

How do we report an exciting new bug?

Asked by Jeruba (56031points) March 24th, 2022

The “Topics” line suddenly seems to be showing white on yellow: illegible. How do we report things like that these days?

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

47 Answers

janbb's avatar

Might be a bug on your machine. Both topic lines look fine to me.

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

They appear normal to me on a desktop PC.

Jeruba's avatar

Uh-oh. That suggests it’s connected somehow to the fact that Windows 11 just bullied me into installing it, followed by Firefox doing the same. No idea what to do now, then.

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

Your machine probably has a different internet browser. Try opening it, and access Fluther that way to see if it appears normally.

Jeruba's avatar

@Hawaii_Jake, good idea….

and nope, the tags are still white on yellow (the Fluther palette’s French vanilla shade) there too, and unreadable unless I highlight them. I wonder what on earth happened with W11. That’s a weird bug—and a pretty big one, if the color codes are off somehow.

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

I have Windows 11, and the tags are legible.

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

I’m typing this on a Windows 11 machine, and the site looks completely normal. I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what wires got crossed in your machine somehow.

Brian1946's avatar

I’m running Windows 7, so I don’t know how applicable the following will be:

When I right click on my desktop background, I get a menu that includes an option to Personalize.

On the Personalize page, I get several contrast options, including four that are High Contrast.

If one of those options is Windows 11 Basic, try that. Perhaps that will reset your contrast.

If not, I have several other suggestions.

LadyMarissa's avatar

@Jeruba I recently switched to W11 & I use Firefox. The Firefox update was to accommodate the changes to W11. I’m not having the same problem as you. I think that it’s a coincidence that your problem came up after the upgrades. Don’t know that it matters but my laptop is a Lenovo Yoga. Anytime I get something weird happening, I close down my computer & restart it. That seems to fix almost all my problems.

SEKA's avatar

I recently switched to Win11 and use FF as well. After reading @Brian1946 suggestion, I decided to look. I did see an option to “sync your settings”. Mine is turned to “on”. I did a quick gaze over why you would want to sync and it seems that Microsoft saved your settings from Win10 and you can apply to 11 by having it sync. I don’t remember messing with this setting, but thought it might be of interest since your prob started after your upgrade

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

I really like the suggestion from @LadyMarissa. Restart your computer.

Tropical_Willie's avatar

Dr J’s logos have disappeared !

SEKA's avatar

@Tropical_Willie What are the Dr J’s logos? I’m not familiar with those or where to look to see if available to me

Tropical_Willie's avatar

Upper left top banner and lower left just to left of “Home”.

I’ve tried three different browsers, logos are on i.fluther but not desktop.

KRD's avatar

You can contact the mods or contact Fluther HQ.

SEKA's avatar

@Tropical_Willie Thank you. My Fluther logo is missing but the link still seems to be working. Everything to the right of the Fluther logo looks like it’s ok to me

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

I’m on a laptop running Windows 11 using the Chrome browser. The site is working completely normally. Dr. J is there. The logo is fine. The questions appear normally. The topics appear normally. I have no issues.

I usually access the site on my tablet, so I view the mobile site, but I’ve been looking at it from my laptop for this question.

flutherother's avatar

I’m running Windows 10 with Chrome and the colouring is a bit messed up. The topic tabs are black on vanilla, but legible. If I click on my latest lurve the screen colouring goes back to normal.

YARNLADY's avatar

mine are white, illegible
Edit: I adjusted the color enhancer and they became whiter, easier ti barely see.

YARNLADY's avatar

Since this site is no longer maintained, we can just hope Ben or Andrew notices during a visit.

janbb's avatar

@YARNLADY When there’s a serious bug, the mods can contact Ben and he will try to debug it for us.

Jeruba's avatar

Wow, much more to this than I thought. I am very weak on tech stuff and worry about breaking something if I mess around.

I’m on a Dell laptop.

@Hawaii_Jake, @LadyMarissa, I restarted as part of the updates, or stood by during auto restarts. I also I routinely shut down every night, restart in the morning, so that’s not it.

@Brian1946, I don’t see “Windows 11 basic” or anything that sounds like it. Could I see your other ideas?

@SEKA, where did you find that sync option?

@Tropical_Willie, that’s another weird one. I’m not missing any logos, as far as I can tell. (Other graphics, though—yes, see postscript below.) So have you just had an upgrade?

@flutherother, what is your normal color for the tags? For, me, black on vanilla is the norm, and that’s what’s gone wrong.

@YARNLADY, how odd (I think) that we both see the same problem, and no one else does. Does your loss of color correlate with any other recent change you’ve made or hosted?

To add to the mystery: I also access Fluther on a tablet. My tablet is a Kindle Fire, and I use the Amazon Silk browser. (I’m not crazy about Silk, but then, it’s not a full-fledged tablet, just a glorified e-reader.) On the tablet, the black tags have disappeared there too. That’s why I thought it was a Fluther problem and not a browser or OS problem.

I’m grateful for all suggestions (and sympathy), and hoping one of them will turn out to be the magic answer.

P.S. Some graphics are missing too. I see a little blank square following “Flag as” instead of whatever is usually there. For a while recently, I saw the little box following lurve scores instead of the star.

filmfann's avatar

Seems fine on my kindle.

Brian1946's avatar

@Jeruba

When all your applications are minimized so that the only thing you see on your screen is the background, do you get a menu if you right click on the screen?

YARNLADY's avatar

No, I haven’t made any changes that I know of, but right now, the colors that were yellow are more like pale green.

flutherother's avatar

@Jeruba My tags were coloured like the General, Social and Meta bars up until a couple of days ago. That is vanilla lettering on a burnt orange background. It is now black on vanilla until I click on a particular question when it reverts to burnt orange.

Tropical_Willie's avatar

No updates, Android phone with Chrome, Macbook Pro both Safari and Firefox. Samey samey !

SEKA's avatar

@Jeruba I discovered the “sync” while following @Brian1946‘s instructions on his Win7. When I went back to look this morning, I was having a problem locating it. I kept looking until I found it. On my task bar at the bottom, there is an icon that looks like a magnifying glass. I think it’s the search button. Click that icon & type the word “sync”. Mine populated the words “sync your settings”. I clicked on that and it took me straight to it. Everything should be turned to “ON” except “password”. It has a message that you need to do something special before turning on the pw but I need more time to study it before I’m willing to try that one.

My Fluther logo is still missing this morning but the link is still working. Everything else seems to be ok. My tags are all there. Mine are a brick red color unlike some of the colors others have mentioned.

I don’t know if you saw it yesterday, but LadyM outed a hacker on here. They had just joined yesterday so it might have nothing to do with your problem but they could have possibly done some minor damage. Everybody who has noticed seems to have a different problem so I’m keeoing an open mind. Somebody here will figure it out

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

This is baffling. Some people are having issues, and some aren’t.

Jeruba's avatar

Weirder and weirder: I doubted my memory of the tags being black—I think they weren’t; they were as @flutherother describes (I think). But—just to check, I looked back at an old page from 2018. I’ve saved a few entire pages for one reason or another. On this page too, a page I saved as an HTML file several years ago,

•  the topic tags are white on vanilla, as now
•  the graphics next to the category labels on the section tabs are missing (yet I do see those graphics right now on this current page)
•  the graphics in the top panel alongside Dr. J are missing (and they’re missing for me now on the current page)

I went all the way back to a page from 2009 and found the same thing. And this was not the case when I saved them.

This suggests that the problem is not in coding the colors and graphics but in rendering them. Could it be (a) a Fluther bug that is somehow conditional on some other factor, so that not all of us see it, or (b) a bug in something in the Firefox or W11 update that creates a condition not accounted for in the Fluther code? Or something else?

I’m still also seeing the little blank square next to the “Flag as…” option, where the tiny pennant flag is supposed to be.

————

I think it’s time to alert Ben.

Jeruba's avatar

Oh, and the lovely damask wallpaper and the color gradient are missing from the side panels.

LadyMarissa's avatar

Yesterday I still had everything. Came on today to NO Fluther logo and the icons just before the “General”, “Social”, “Just For You”, & “Meta” have disappeared. The wallpaper on either side is showing at the top of the page, but turns solid green as you come down the page.

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

I got out my laptop to check. Running Windows 11 with a Chrome browser. Everything is still completely normal. I don’t think it’s a problem with Windows 11, but then I really don’t know.

Jeruba's avatar

And just fwiw, I don’t see anything unusual about any of the other pages I visit.

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

^I think that’s a strong indication the problem is with the site and not Windows 11 or your browser.

LadyMarissa's avatar

@Hawaii_Jake I don’t know what it is, but I agree it’s not W11. I upgraded over a week ago & today is my first day of having any trouble. IF it was W11, I think it would have been a problem starting last week!!! I’ve been using FF for 14 years & NEVER a problem like this one.

Jeruba's avatar

@Hawaii_Jake, yes, I agree. That’s why I think it’s time to call on Ben. Wondering if it could have been like a sleeper bug (there can be such a thing, right?) that didn’t get tripped until something changed under W11.

But wait, that does not explain the problem on my Amazon Fire tablet. As of now, it still has the graphics at the top and with the section tabs, but the topic tags are still white on vanilla and not legible.

Maybe the tags themselves are unchanged but their contrasting background is gone? That makes more sense because none of the print seems to be absent, only graphics.

So maybe it’s not about rendering print at all. Rather, some graphic elements are missing from the program files or there’s something wrong with the call to them in the code.

LadyMarissa's avatar

@Jeruba I hadn’t been using my Kindle on here up until you mentioned it. I got it out & my colors on Kindle are exactly the same as my desktop. The topics tabs are a brick red with a light yellow print. The Fluther logo was missing, the wallpaper print on each side was at the top but went to solid green as I scrolled down. The banner at the top with all the jellies was non-existent because it was a solid green. The “general” through “meta” tabs had NO icons with them. The green banner didn’t ask me to join like the one above here does. I wasn’t using FF on my Kindle because I don’t think I can. I use Amazon’s Silk browser. It also doesn’t have W11.

Jeruba's avatar

And just now, while I was looking at another page, Fluther crashed on me and booted me out. Never had that happen before. I got right back in, but still. Something seems to be unstable all of a sudden.

LadyMarissa's avatar

It’s Sunday morning & the same thing happened to me this morning. I came in & was giving a GA when POOF crashed & burned. I assumed that Ben might be working on the other problems so I came right back & got in fine & everything seems to be OK for now!!!

raum's avatar

Weird.

Did not see the glitches on my iPhone 12. But I lost my phone and I’m currently using my old iPhone 8. Now I’m seeing the glitches. Seems like it depends on your phone make/model?

Jeruba's avatar

@raum, I don’t think so. I don’t ever use a phone for Fluther. I use a laptop and a tablet, entirely different devices with different software. Others reporting glitches are on still other systems. It’s appearing across platforms, but not with other websites. It has to be something peculiar to Fluther, and not uniformly.

Brian1946's avatar

I’m using a Windows 7 desktop w/Firefox, and now instead of seeing the Flooder logo in the upper left corner, all I see is a green rectangle inscribed with red letters saying Flooder logo. :p

Jeruba's avatar

Hey—all the graphics are back! It’s just after 11 p.m. PDT, and everything looks normal once again. I’m on my tablet at the moment. How is it with you?

I say THANKS, BEN! We love you.

LadyMarissa's avatar

@Jeruba Popped in to let you know that as of 08:00am EDT on Monday 03/28 that everything seems to be back to normal. Since I wasn’t awake at 11 p.m. PDT, I didn’t catch it any earlier. THANKS for all your help in getting everything back in place & a HUGE THANK YOU TO BEN for ALL his hard work!!!

raum's avatar

Back to normal at my end too.
Thanks, @Ben!

KRD's avatar

I’m using a windows 10 ASUS Republic of Gamers and it does go through gliches.

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