Edit forum message?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Yesterday and today, if I post a message and then click the "Edit Post" button, I just get a spinning wait icon and it never enters the edit screen.

This is on Mac Safari, presumably latest Version 5.0.3 (6533.19.4)

I have such bad spelling and grammar, that I edit posts frequently, so am pretty sure this behavior changed in the last day or two.

Maybe Safari updated itself with something that broke this feature. Or maybe something changed on the forum software?

It's no big deal, except the inability to edit makes me look even more illiterate than usual.

[Raoul]

It's a Mac issue (it feels so satisfying to say that).

I just went in and did an edit using IE. NP.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Thanks Raoul.

I program PC more than Mac, but been on vacation and haven't had any of the PC's booted for a couple of weeks. I like programming PC more than Macs, but the Mac is OK for some uses.

[Raoul]

I have no personal issues with mac, I just think Jobs is a Nazi. I'm most fond of linux...except for the neverending driver issues.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I have no personal issues with mac, I just think Jobs is a Nazi. I'm most fond of linux...except for the neverending driver issues.

Yep, Bill Gates invented the computer for the rest of us. It burns thinking about the price premium on Macs in the early days, which still hasn't entirely gone away.

Dunno much linux, might learn one of these days. I do commercial music programming, and there isn't a big retail market for linux shrinkwrap music software, so there is no pressing need to learn that platform ATM. Looks like Granny could learn to use something like Ubuntu about as easy as Winders or Mac.

[Raoul]

Yeah it's a good thing we had Bill and Al, otherwise we'd still be using tin cans and string, or at least a bbs. lol

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I double-checked this issue on a Mac laptop, same Safari Version 5.0.3 (6533.19.4) and same OS Version 10.6.6 as my Mac Pro desktop. Probably both auto-updated in the last couple of weeks sometime.

The MacBook has the same symptom. So POSSIBLY it is an issue related to a recent Mac update rather than just one Mac mysteriously going bonkers for no apparent reason. Perhaps some new security fix causes this problem.

Discovered a workaround-- Right-Click on the "Edit Post" button, and select "Open Link in New Tab" or "Open Link in New Window" in the drop-down menu.

Then Safari will open the Edit Post webpage in the new tab or window, which functions properly, exactly as it did prior to the appearance of this bug.

[DaveTN]

What happens when you get on one of your real computers; will it let you edit the post then?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

What happens when you get on one of your real computers; will it let you edit the post then?

Hi Dave

Am confident it will work on a PC. Will test it out tomorrow when I re-apply nose to grindstone after vacation. Coffee break's over, back on your heads.

It is kinda symbolic not to boot the PC till in the morning when I go back to work (though the location in the house is the same as today. Some vacation!).

OTOH, if it doesn't work on the PC either, then maybe AT&T's web service is screwing with me somehow.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

OK, it works on winders 7.

For a moment I thought it was not gonna work. Clicking the Edit Post button lit up the spinning wait icon for several seconds before entering the edit page. A longer wait than I was accustomed to in the past. But after several seconds it did enter the edit page.

However, I re-verified that on the Mac it just sits there waiting for at least a minute and never makes it to the edit page.

Ain't complaining. Just reporting. It is probably not anything changed in the forum software that triggered the behavior change. It may not be anything reasonably fixable in the forum software. Just reporting.

Maybe it is something new that AT&T is doing with routing, or whatever.

Edited January 17, 2011 by Lester Weevils

[LagerHead]

I double-checked this issue on a Mac laptop, same Safari Version 5.0.3 (6533.19.4) and same OS Version 10.6.6 as my Mac Pro desktop. Probably both auto-updated in the last couple of weeks sometime.

The MacBook has the same symptom. So POSSIBLY it is an issue related to a recent Mac update rather than just one Mac mysteriously going bonkers for no apparent reason. Perhaps some new security fix causes this problem.

Discovered a workaround-- Right-Click on the "Edit Post" button, and select "Open Link in New Tab" or "Open Link in New Window" in the drop-down menu.

Then Safari will open the Edit Post webpage in the new tab or window, which functions properly, exactly as it did prior to the appearance of this bug.

A better fix would be to switch to Firefox.

Just sayin'.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

A better fix would be to switch to Firefox.

Just sayin'.

Thanks LagerHead

Yes that is a possibility. Have played with Firefox some on Ubuntu running in a VMware virtual machine. Seems to work fine.

Just discussing-- Not platform wars, as I appreciate all the platforms--

One feature I like on Safari which seems somewhat unique unless I'm being real dumb and missing features somewhere-- Safari has a feature that if one is on a webpage displaying a picture, you can right-click on the picture and select "display image in new tab" (or window). Then you can copy the URL and easily embed the picture URL in a forum message.

This simple function works on at least 95 percent of web images in my experience.

On Win 7 Internet explorer, a procedure like this only yields an embeddable picture URL a much lower percentage of the time. It seems that if an image is in certain website folders or inside various online picture manager softwares, Internet Explorer will fail to deliver an embeddable URL. If I had to guess, would guess that the microsoft lawyers have instructed the programmers to make this feature fail if there is much danger of the browser accidentally enabling image copyright infringement.

I just experimented with Firefox 3.6.13, which also seems "less likely" of extracting an embeddable image URL, compared to Safari.

Noticed this difference starkly about a month ago. Was doing casual conversation with some beta testers while on our beta forum in IE. I wanted to embed some pretty pictures of Hiwassee and Fontana in the fall. Found some suitable images, but many of the pictures were inside photo managers or otherwise copyright restricted, and IE would not let me simply embed the images in a private forum to show my long-distance friends.

So I fired up Safari and embedded all the images I wished, easy-peasy and quick, direct out of the source web pages servers. It was the first time I noticed how much better Safari handles this task compared to others.

Maybe with IE and Firefox it is just a programming omission rather than a lawyer thang. I doubt if lawyers hold much sway over the Firefox team. It just seems a pretty easy feature to implement, that the inability of the feature would almost demand that the programmers are intentionally crippling the feature, rather than the explanation that they just haven't thunk up that such a feature is a useful idea.

Edited January 19, 2011 by Lester Weevils

[Erik88]

It's doing the same thing for me. I can't edit any posts and I'm using windows 7

[kb4ns]

Clicking the Edit Post button lit up the spinning wait icon for several seconds before entering the edit page. A longer wait than I was accustomed to in the past. But after several seconds it did enter the edit page.

I've been experiencing this with XP and Chrome. However, if I click "edit post" again, it'll go ahead and go to the edit page. Not a big deal.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Thanks Eric88 and kb4ns

This weekend Safari started editing fine again and am certain it hasn't done any more updates.

Monday the bug came back but kb4ns' trick of clicking twice worked. This morning it worked nice and fast. Maybe it has something to do with transient issues such as internet latency or server load or ...?