08 September 2012 @ 01:49 am
I hate change!  
So today LiveJournal's been playing me up. This is not the first time, of course. Nor, I suspect, will it be the last. I do hope they get whatever-it-is debugged soon, though.

All day, when I've tried to access a page on LiveJournal, such as my blog or my friends page, I've been getting a pop-up from Internet Explorer saying that it cannot open it. This doesn't happen every time; but it does occur about eighty percent of the time. (You understand, of course, that I am actually seeing the page perfectly well behind the pop-up!) Anyway, when I click off the pop-up, it all goes blank. However, when I hit the BACK button, I go "back" to the page I've been trying to reach. So this is an infernal nuisance, but not terminally so.

More of a problem, though, is the fact that there are some communities that I truly am not accessing. Oh, not all. Some simply have the "pop-up problem" with access. That's true of [livejournal.com profile] fkcommentfic (which is currently of interest), and also of Yuletide Admin and FK Fic Fest (for I've been clicking around a bit to check). But [livejournal.com profile] maryrenaultfics is being tiresome. I can get the page all right; but all I see is the header. No posts. And yes, I am logged in; so the fact that the comm is closed shouldn't make a difference. I'm not seeing any posts, not even the old ones.

Of course, I contacted the LJ troubleshooters, who promptly suggested that I upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. Which I have done. (And I don't like it. But that's for later.) The point here, though, is that the upgrade hasn't done any good. So I can only keep my fingers crossed that they think of something that does work.

I suspect that they've been doing some silly little upgrade tweak, and it's fouling up on Internet Explorer. Again. (It always seems to be Internet Explorer that gets a bad reaction when they upgrade.) And yes, I know, someone is going to suggest I switch to Firefox or Chrome, right? Only I don't want to. I've got used to Internet Explorer.

Which brings me to this IE8. Now, I've fixed some things. I googled up a way to get rid of the extra nonsense listed on a toolbar I don't need, and then I got rid of that as well: that returned the browser's general appearance to something resembling normal. However, they've added a so-called "security feature"—to wit, greying very pale almost all of the URL of the webpage you're looking at—and you CAN'T TURN IT OFF!!!! It's like looking at your wristwatch: you don't realize how often you do it until you take it in to be cleaned; and then you keep glancing down at a bare wrist, and getting a shock. I keep glancing up at the address bar, only most of the address is nearly invisible. I want to know what page I'm on, darn it; and I don't want to have to keep shifting the cursor up (which turns it dark and legible).

Also, when I do VIEW and SOURCE, I don't get Notepad any more. I get some fancy page with the code in colours. It used to be that I could hit SOURCE and do my editing straight off. Now I have to work around everything in a silly, complicated way.
Edited at 2:04 a.m. I did a bit more googling, and found out how to fix this at least. SOURCE now gives me Notepad again. That's one small mercy!
And, to top it off, I've just discovered that some of the pages on my website don't read properly in IE8. This means, of course, that anyone using it hasn't been able to read some of my stories—or at least not easily. Whether the problem exists with other recent browsers, I don't know. Fortunately, it only seems to apply to pages I've done in the last month. It also looks as though all I have to do is change p to div, and add a few line-breaks. So it's a nuisance, but a petty one. (I know what this is, though. It's the upgrade from HTML4 to HTML5. They're phasing out some of the old mark-up.)

Basically, this is all a right royal pain in the neck. I hate change. And, right at the moment, I'm more than a little browned off with LiveJournal. I really do hope they get this all fixed. And soon!
 
 
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[identity profile] brightknightie.livejournal.com on September 8th, 2012 08:34 pm (UTC)
In case this fact might be a clue in your examination of your issues: I allowed FKFicFest's paid status to lapse last week, so it is currently a free community (during the active game months, it is paid). Are perhaps all the journals you're having trouble accessing free journals (and therefore trying to serve you advertisements)? Could it be a pop-up-blocker or ad-blocker issue?

I am having no LJ issues this week except an irritating escalation in spam replies. However, I have a permanent account, purchased many years ago when I was in better financial circumstances, and therefore I never see any of the ads, and don't run into blocker issues.

Just an idea; it may not have have relevance.

Good luck.
[identity profile] greerwatson.livejournal.com on September 8th, 2012 09:08 pm (UTC)
Well, I just tried to access your blog, and got the "IE can't open this page" pop-up. So, no. I had thought for a couple of weeks that there was something like that going on, for free communities were downloading very slowly and it was clear that IE was doing each ad separately at a snail's pace.

However, that can't account for [livejournal.com profile] maryrenaultfics being mysteriously blanked out for the past two days. I am still a member of the community (for it says so at the top of the page, where the header is visible). If I were a member of any other closed communities, I could see if they were also affected. But I'm not; and, by their very nature, there's no point in my trying to access a closed community of which I am not a member.

I have done a little more checking around. I can access f-locked posts on other people's personal blogs (with the proviso that I get the pop-up and have to hit the back button). So it's not simply "locking" that's the issue, either.

As I say, I suspect TPTB have been doing some behind-the-scenes upgrade: Internet Explorer seems to be very sensitive to these things; and, absurdly, they never seem to check first to see if their upgrades have any effect on it. There may be a security aspect, too: today, when I access my Friends page, I've been getting pop-up security alerts that I'm about to "view pages over a secure connection".

It's decidedly a nuisance.
[identity profile] brightknightie.livejournal.com on September 8th, 2012 10:15 pm (UTC)
I'm using IE9 and having no problems. Are you really using only IE8, or did you mean to type "IE9" in your post? IE9 has been out for a year or so now.
[identity profile] greerwatson.livejournal.com on September 9th, 2012 12:30 am (UTC)
No, I just upgraded from IE7 to IE8. (I've been using IE7 for a couple of years, having had to update from IE6 when I found I suddenly couldn't get AO3.)
[identity profile] greerwatson.livejournal.com on September 9th, 2012 12:32 am (UTC)
I should add that LJ's specs say that they still support IE8.
[identity profile] greerwatson.livejournal.com on September 9th, 2012 12:43 am (UTC)
I just checked. You can't install IE9 on Windows XP. You have to have Vista or 7. However, I use WordPerfect for DOS; and, although it runs fine on XP, it doesn't run properly on the later versions of Windows.

So installing IE9 does not seem to be an option.