status-monitor Anyone else have forum issues with Google Chrome?

[mad409]

I have a lot of strange things happen, like tonight I went to namepros.com and I could see the html coding for the entire main page and that was it.

Sometimes when browsing many buttons are there but no wording appears.

Sometimes I just have to close it out and reboot chrome and start again to correct other issues.

Anyone else??

 

[forge]

I have a lot of strange things happen, like tonight I went to namepros.com and I could see the html coding for the entire main page and that was it.

Anyone else??

Yes, I've gotten this several times but I use Firefox.

 

[Eric Lyon]

A few questions to help us determine the cause:

1. When did you first notice it?
2. How often does it happen?
3. When it does happen, how long does it last?

If you could, please provide screenshots in this thread or send them to me privately the next time it happens.

Thanks,

 

[mad409]

PM sent..

 

[dordomai]

I have a lot of strange things happen, like tonight I went to namepros.com and I could see the html coding for the entire main page and that was it.

Anyone else??

yes but just for a moment and then the page will be fully displayed. It's not a real issue for me. (Chrome)

 

[aramyus]

I have similar problems with firefox.

The forum is slow and the pages are huge. Loading 10 pages in different tabs is enough to kill my computer. Then anything can happen.

Browers are globally slow and unreliable. Internet pages are bigger and bigger. I think this kind of behavior will worsen in the future. I really regret the early times of yahoo

 

[Paul]

I believe lack-of-text is a recent bug in Chrome; it's been happening to me on many websites. I'll see if I can find a workaround.

The visible code issue is probably related to caching. I should be able to fix that without much difficulty.

 

[Paul]

The visible code issue should now be fixed for all browsers.

To anyone experiencing the missing text issue: what platform are you on (Mac, Windows, or Linux)? I've only experienced it on Mac; I can't reproduce it on other platforms.

This Chrome bug report seems to be related: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=599357

 

[mad409]

The visible code issue should now be fixed for all browsers.

To anyone experiencing the missing text issue: what platform are you on (Mac, Windows, or Linux)? I've only experienced it on Mac; I can't reproduce it on other platforms.

This Chrome bug report seems to be related: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=599357

It doesn't happen all the time but I'll send you a screen shot next time I have missing text on buttons, sometimes other places site wide.

I'm using Windows...

 

[Paul]

It's a very mysterious bug. Now that I'm actually looking for it, I can't seem to reproduce it. There was a period of a few days where it happened about once an hour, but I thought it had something to do with my ad blocker. However, I'm traveling at the moment, so I'm hitting a different datacenter than when I first encountered the problem.

@mad409, could I bother you to visit https://namepros.com/cdn-cgi/trace and give me the text from visit_scheme=https onward? For example, here's what it shows for me:

visit_scheme=https
uag=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.116 Safari/537.36
colo=ORD
spdy=h2
http=h2
loc=US

When I'm at home, it would normally say colo=EWR--that's the code for the airport nearest the datacenter. EWR is Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, US, whereas ORD is O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, US. It's possible that some datacenters are triggering the issue while others aren't.

Another interesting component here is http=h2, which indicates my browser connected using HTTP/2. @aramyus, you mentioned that webpages are bigger and bigger. In most cases, it's not actually the size that slows things down: it's the number of resources, where resources typically include images, scripts, and styling information. For each resource, your browser needs to make a separate request to the server, and this takes a lot of time because it typically needs to make these requests one at a time. HTTP/2 is a brand new protocol that NamePros uses to speed up this process: not only can your browser request multiple resources simultaneously on a single connection, but our servers will actually send your browser the most essential resources even before your browser knows it needs them. Most of these resources are relatively small; it's the back-and-forth that slows things down. By "preloading" resources, we can eliminate much of the back-and-forth. This is particularly effective on slow, unreliable connections, such as those used by smartphones.

If any of that was confusing, just know that http=h2 means your browser and our servers are working together to load pages faster using a new technology.

This is important because when I experienced the bug, the time it took for text to be visible was roughly the same as the time the page would have taken to load without HTTP/2 preloading.

Three events happened around the time the bug started:

• Chrome v52.x was released.
• We upgraded the forum software.
• We implemented HTTP/2 preloading--note that basic HTTP/2 has been enabled for quite some time; the only addition here was preloading.
• We removed our script that was used to load resources faster on HTTP/1.1, as HTTP/2 obsoletes that script.
• CloudFlare has continually been adding and upgrading datacenters, as well as the software that handles HTTP/2.

Which one is the culprit?

 

[mad409]

@Paul Buonopane

Here's what I see.

visit_scheme=https
uag=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.112 Safari/537.36
colo=ATL
spdy=h2
http=h2
loc=US

 

[mad409]

@Paul Buonopane
@Eric Lyon

FYI - I haven't had the html code appear since I posted about it last but it only happens from time to time.

I was able to capture my other issues today, let me explain.

1. Clicked on Domaining to read current news, opened a new window. Closed out the window at their site and when looking at NP all the text was missing on the left side of the main page. Before I could get a screen shot of that it goes to a error page, see shot.

2. Hit the back button to return to NP and you will see in the screen shot how post reply, upload a file, more options are missing. This is what I mean by the text missing on the site and buttons from time to time. I can also refresh page and the same thing.

The only way to get the site right is to close out Chrome completely and relaunch Chrome.

Hope this helps..

 

[Paul]

That's definitely a Chrome bug. You're several Chrome versions behind. Could you try updating? Menu -> Help -> About Google Chrome. When it's done, you should be on version 52.0.2743.116.

 

[mad409]

That's definitely a Chrome bug. You're several Chrome versions behind. Could you try updating? Menu -> Help -> About Google Chrome. When it's done, you should be on version 52.0.2743.116.

OK will due that and see what happens, thanks..

 

[redesignunit]

no not for me in chrome.

 

[mad409]

no not for me in chrome.

I can't update unless I update from Vista, not sure I want to do that yet.

 

[Paul]

I can't update unless I update from Vista, not sure I want to do that yet.

Staying on Vista is a significant security risk. There are a large number of known vulnerabilities; that's the case with any operating system or software that's out of date. Typically, with Windows, you'll want to update each Patch Tuesday to ensure you're not susceptible to malware. Otherwise, you can receive a virus by simply visiting a webpage on a server that's been compromised (thousands get compromised every day), receiving an email (without even opening it), or similar difficult-to-avoid attack vectors. Antivirus software alone won't protect you from these threats, nor will switching to Mac, which just received an astounding number of critical patches a couple weeks ago.

If it gives you more confidence, in my tests, Windows 10 runs significantly better than Vista on identical hardware. (I even run Windows 10 Pro on a measly little tablet that I got for chump change!) If you'd like any help upgrading, I'd be more than happy to lend a hand. I can also guide you in the direction of people who may be able to help you in your area.

That being said, I was finally able to reproduce the issue, so it's definitely not specific to your version of Chrome. Even if it were, we wouldn't want to abandon our Vista userbase. I'm finally making some progress troubleshooting the issue. I think it may be related to some of the extensions I'm using, possibly an ad blocker. Are you using any extensions or ad blockers? Do you have toolbars or receive popups frequently on otherwise reputable websites?

 

[Paul]

It appears that if a page is optimized to load as quickly as possible, the content on the page may be available to the browser before any custom fonts. Historically, on pages affected by this issue, this has resulted in a mildly annoying change in font when the font files finally load. However, it seems that Chrome is now opting to hide all of the text on the page until all fonts are available--but only if the fonts are in the process of loading. This mostly affects users with slow or unreliable connections, such as mobile users, as the time taken to download a font file may be long enough for the user to notice the lack of text. The bug begins when the browser starts downloading a font, and ends when the download is complete.

NamePros deliberately avoids using custom fonts: we use whatever happens to be available on your system. Unfortunately, some of our third-party integrations aren't so cautious. If you've connected your Google account to your NamePros account, your browser will likely be instructed to load additional fonts. I haven't noticed Facebook doing that yet.

 

[mad409]

@Paul Buonopane

I had pop up blockers before, probably still do. I'm not having issues with other sites other than Norton warning me not to go to a site, Malwarebytes blocking new gTLDs. Not all new gTLDs but I've had a couple. Just added them to the OK list though.

I'm gonna upgrade to 10 just to be safe and see what happens. Thanks..