WAB freezes browser?

[Pudding4brains]

Hi Stu/All,

Since a week or so my little oldish Pentium II/266 laptop very often freezes when loading the WAB site. It only happens when I'm logged in, not when visiting as a guest, and I somehow very strongly suspect the fancy "Notices" box in the right hand side menu bar to be responsible (browser always freezes when attempting to display the right menu bar and never gets around to displaying the notices, but other fields in the bar are sometimes displayed).

System Win98SE, Firefox 2, NoScript (with google-syndication etc blocked).

Not sure if it is some XSS-thingy (does the content of the notices box come from the WAB-domain?), or something to do with some fancy animation plugin orso. Went away for a few days after bugging me last week, but now it's back - maybe content-dependent?

Did something change in the past two weeks content/technology wise?? I just noticed that on this PC the Notices box now shows some animation??

Anyone else experiencing freezes?

Cheers!
Arp

[eeyore]

i'd suspect that it could just be a memory issue brought on by the animations in the notices box - or perhaps by threads that have lots of pics in them - I would imagine that a pen 2 laptop doesnt have much in the way of ram.

that said i have occasionally experienced freezes on my vista laptop (dual core chip - 2gb ram) which i eventually traced down to having the google syndication blocked, as soon as i removed the block it worked fine so that might also be your problem.

[Pudding4brains]

Hi eeyore,

Thanks for your thoughts! The laptop has 256MB which is fine for most things. At some point I removed the WAB-cookies (to "log off"), then allowed google-s&a, then logged in again and it worked. But now I have google-s&a blocked again and it still works ... ... so, thinking it may have something to do with changing content in the notices box. Will see if it comes back again and then try to figure out what the notice is showing.

Anyway, all is back to "normal" for now

Cheers! Arp

[Bucknallbear]

I am using Opera 9.26 build 698 running on Fedora 6.4. I get freezes with WAB all the time. I downloaded the latest Opera and it has made no difference. I am a big fan of tabbed browsing and often have 20 - 30 tabs open at one time but it is only WAB that crashes Opera. As it just freezes I don't even get any error messages. I know that few people are going to use Fedora and even less Opera but if anyone has any ideas then please let me know!

Peter

[Pudding4brains]

Hi Peter,
any chance your freezes would be related to mine? Does WAB also freeze on you when you are not logged in? Mine has been fine for a few days now, do you have "bad" and "good" periods/days?

Cheers, Arp

[Pudding4brains]

Okay, all was fine again for a while (even this afternoon) but now the freezes are back.

What changed in the content of the "Notices" box since this afternoon ???

I can pretty much rule out anything else:

- Addressed WAB -> browser froze
- Restarted browser, removed WAB-cookie (=log-off), Addressed WAB (shows fine)
- "allowed" Google-synd. (still fine), log-in -> Freeze
- Restarted browser, removed WAB-cookie (=log-off), Addressed WAB (shows fine)
- "allowed" Google-anal. (still fine), log-in -> Freeze

So, the culprit clearly is not in blocking Google, and I'm pretty darn sure it must be the notices box as this item is not showing when I'm logged off (and everything is fine!) and never completes displaying (the only content div remaining blanked/white) when the browser freezes.

Also, on this PC (also Win98SE, FF2 etc but more MHz and RAM) currently an "Adblock" icon/notice shows with the Notices box - and this one is working fine ... I'll go back to the laptop and install AdBlock there too, see if it helps ...

Edit: Nope - that already has Adblock installed too ...

So, what is the Notices content that causes the freezing??? What wasn't displaying this afternoon that is displaying now???

Cheers, Arp

[eeyore]

Have you tried closing the notices box so it isnt displaying anything ? (click on the blue arrow at the right of the title bar )

[Pudding4brains]

Originally Posted by eeyore

Have you tried closing the notices box so it isnt displaying anything ? (click on the blue arrow at the right of the title bar )

Hmmm, I hadn't tried that, but it seems a bit of a chicken and egg thing ... I would need to be logged in to get the notice box, but when I get it the browser freezes. However, could try to be quick and click the "close" Icon as soon as it is displayed, hoping to have it do something before the browser freezes.

In fact, I just tried that, and the browser didn't freeze but then I opened the box again and the browser still didn't freeze so apparently the problem has gone away again over the past few hours ...???

But it's a good idea anyway - I'll just keep the notices box closed permanently for now and see if the problem comes back at all

Cheers, Arp

[MundusVultDecipi]

The animation in the 'Notices' box is flash. Do you have the latest flash (shockwave) plugin?

[Pudding4brains]

Originally Posted by MundusVultDecipi

The animation in the 'Notices' box is flash. Do you have the latest flash (shockwave) plugin?

It might not be the latest version on that machine (will check), but there would still have to be a difference in what's showing (flash functions used?) as it sometimes freezes the browser and sometimes not ... Also, all (most?) other sites seem to work (or at least not freeze the browser), but I tend to avoid sites that lean heavily on flash and other 'gimmicks' anyway ...

[Bucknallbear]

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

Hi Peter,
any chance your freezes would be related to mine? Does WAB also freeze on you when you are not logged in? Mine has been fine for a few days now, do you have "bad" and "good" periods/days?

Cheers, Arp

Hi Arp,

Have been away for a few days so sorry for the delay in replying. Will have at look to see whether logging in makes any difference as I always log in when I am on the site.

Peter

[Bucknallbear]

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

It might not be the latest version on that machine (will check), but there would still have to be a difference in what's showing (flash functions used?) as it sometimes freezes the browser and sometimes not ... Also, all (most?) other sites seem to work (or at least not freeze the browser), but I tend to avoid sites that lean heavily on flash and other 'gimmicks' anyway ...

Curious, the notices box was empty. I logged on with Firefox and can see the content. Checked back with Opera and the content is there and Flash in shown as an active plugin. Can't see why flash would crash Opera as I thought this site was W3C.

Will try and keep a note of when things crash in the future.

Peter