Share the frustrations of carefully, or even occasionally, cleverly wording a comment to a blog or story, pressing submit only to see a fault notice come up and one's efforts disappear into the void?
I suspect the major culprit is MS and their idiot offspring Internet Exploder, although it does tend to happen more on this site than others I visit.
Obviously it's happened again hence this blog.
Comments
Use Firefox!
also do your work in notepad first before pasting in the text box editor. Firefox is more reliable. But do be warned the text box editor here can be unforgiving so write it in notepad and save it and paste it into the text box editor!
Firefox can be found at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/ you won't regret using it. It's the best and safest browser for PC's at the moment.
Sephrena Lynn Miller
BigCloset TopShelf
TGLibrary.com
i do that for actual stories
i use bbedit for stories, but it never occurs to me to do it for comments.
not as think as i smart i am
occasionally
except, of course, for the "cleverly wording" part. but yeah. bc was throwing lots of "connection lost" errors at me about ten minutes ago, but it seems to be fine now.
not as think as i smart i am
I think It's the scheduled maintenance
Rebecca,
notice the time of day (well, night). I think that "ten minutes ago" was when BCTS was down for nightly maintenance.
Don't start writing anything before midnight Pacific time that you can't post by then. If you do, copy to a text editor or clipboard.
Note: I'm not a maintainer and know nothing about BCTS. I'm just guessing, based on my prior experience.
PS I think there exists a FireFox extension for magically saving your edited text before posting but the name escapes me.
- Moni
i can never keep track of time...
my job takes me all over the place, which was irritating a few years ago but isn't so bad now. usually i live in massachusetts, but right now i'm in thailand. so i have a vague idea of when pacific standard time is, but only vague :)
thanks for the tips, though! :)
not as think as i smart i am
BC down times
BC goes down at 1 am Pacific time for about 8 minutes and again at around 1:30 am PT for about fifteen minutes. These down times are for backup and server maintenance.
It also goes down at 5 after the hour and 35 after the hour for about 20 seconds all day long. These shorter down times are to clear the cache.
If you get an error message while posting something at or near the 5 or 35, wait about 20 seconds then use your browser back button to bring up what you were doing, it will be there and you can resubmit.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Alternative Browsers
Hi Angharad
I've been using Google Chrome for more than a year now. If you're looking to try a non-M$ solution, I'd happily recommend it. I've found it to be very stable.
I share your sense of frustration though. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the software to work flawlessly 100% of the time.
i.e. Programmed Stupidly
Bike Resources
Yeah, it happened several times.
So I usually copy everything in the buffer just in case. A most notorious example of such a screw-up was when I tried to post a long comment to 'Something Feels Strange Part 20', IIRC. I was screwed with a state-of-the-art wall-of-text comment. Lucky me, I have good short-term memory and was able to replicate it, but nonetheless it was very frustrating. Oh, I use MS, IE8.
Faraway
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
And i thought it was just me!!!
Normally i will post most of my comments in the morning and you can guarantee if i post anything at 09.00 it will disappear into the void...frustating !!!
As for using Firefox, Well i use Flock which is based on Firefox and it still happens!!
Kirri
Re: Do others?
As an alternative to IE, I would recommend SeaMonkey (the latest version is 1.1.17). It is a suite consisting of an Internet Browser, Mail and Newsgroups Client, HTML Composer, ChatZilla IRC Chat, DOM Inspector and a JavaScript Debugger. It is the successor to the Mozilla Suite, which was the successor to Netscape, and is based on the same core code as Firefox. It can be obtained here.
Regards,
Dave.
Been there, done that...
With every browser at a time or another. Firefox has been known to completely disappear. IE's only lost my post... Frustrating in both cases...
My condolences to you on the loss of your deathless prose.
Annette
>> Firefox has been known to completely disappear
Indeed. It crashes on me all the time.
Even then, it's *sometimes* possible to recover the cached edit page.
Cheers,
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
My problem with comments,
My problem with comments, blogs, etc. is that they reflect things occasionally that I regret saying after posting. And even with edit, you never know how much has already been read before changing the message into something less brusque or impatient. If anything, my typing skills and word processing features on my computer and here make it easier for me to make an ass out of myself from time to time. But as fast as I can type, I have recognized that everyone's capacity to understand and forgive is even faster, so let's hear it MC-DOS - massive compassion in large doses! Have a spell-check successful day!
"She was born for all the wrong reasons but she grew up for all the right ones." Dio Ti Benedicta! 'drea
Love, Andrea Lena
Listen to S.L.M.
Use FireFox! The latest versions seem to be extremely stable. And besides, it pi##es off MicroStupid when you tell your computer to relegate IE to the garbage can. Which is only fair, because MS pi$$es me off...
Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue
Part of the problem...
is the half-hourly reboot, I think, at five minutes past the hour and half-hour. Quite often, if one backs out with a page back command, the edited text box is still there in cache, and can be saved to text or re-submitted.
Next time it happens, make a note of the time, and try backing out rather than simply trying again.
On a happier note, often times a second draft is better than the first, so one could, if terminally optimistic, consider it more an opportunity than a disaster.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
been caught
more than once, mostly by the 6pm my time one, which I think Erin said is 1am there, but I know to watch that now. Sometimes backing up works sometimes not. Browser makes no diff as far as I can see. I've been using Firefox for a while ( after a recommend from Bob A)and I prefer it on the whole, but you need IE for updates ( still using 6--pokes out tongue--), they'll get ya one way or.... Now I guess I just need to comment a bit, been somewhat lax of late for a whole bunch a reasons, but....
Kristina
Whenever I write, I write it
Whenever I write, I write it first in TextPad for me, it's just a basic text editor like notepad on Windows. Then it gets imported into Word for my wife to read/edit it. Then I take the edited text back and re-read it to make sure the changes she made are not going to affect the overall story much. Then I put it in Textpad again, do the HTML coding to it I need to, then copy/paste into the window here and on my website. I have the text and Word copies still on my HD, and normally I delete the Text file and keep the Word copies in my archive.
----
May the Stars Light Your Path
Maid Joy
http://i-know-i-know-but.net/
Angharad --
From what I've seen, it's an idle-out thing. Independent of browser or site. I have made it a habit when I post anything anywhere to press ctrl+A (select all) and ctrl+C (copy to clipboard) before posting, in case of error. That way, I just have to resubmit it.
Edeyn