Ye Bug List

This topic was created by Andrew Orlowski .

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  1. Andrew Orlowski

    Ye Bug List

    Shaun's tried to post this on the Boot's thread: Philosophy is not dead, it just smells funny. I see an "Approve" and "Reject" buttons - not sure why - but Approve doesn't work. Did it trip a spam checker?
    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      That post has just triggered a gripe. Not a bug per se, more a "wouldn't it be better this way?".

      Any chance we could make inline URL references like that lot open in new tab by default[1] with some jiggery pokery[2] behind the scenes?

      I doubt it'll do El Reg's page view counts (as crowed about elsewhere) any good if you keep shoving your readers off permanently to A.N.Other site whenever some commentard's reference piques their interest. Already here you can see that the locals are like a fat kid given 50 quid and let loose in a sweetshop when it comes to the use of URL references and when this hits the main site......

      [1] Yes, there almost certainly is a config option squirreled away in here somewhere to make clicked URLs open in a new tab, but most of the time I don't want to do this. However, I would like El Reg to stay around while I look at things referenced.

      [2] No I don't do this web stuff. Why do you ask?

      1. Sir Runcible Spoon

        @TeeCee

        "you can see that the locals are like a fat kid given 50 quid and let loose in a sweetshop"

        Oy! I resemble that remark!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I'll see what we can do about the tab.

        1. Sir Runcible Spoon

          Cake

          Have linkies been disabled in t' main forums then?

          1. BristolBachelor Gold badge

            Sir

            I just had a look at your cake link (on the article). I assume that you didn't actually put a link in it? If shows up as a link, and highlights like one, but has no actual payload.

            Although the cake link here goes to a funny picture :)

            1. Sir Runcible Spoon

              Sir

              I used the same html in the main article (I think) that I posted in here. I'll have another go in preview mode and see what shows up.

              1. Sir Runcible Spoon

                Sir

                Hmm, it worked this time.

                The source for the previous post where the link didn't activate was

                < p > < a >Dangers of Cake < / a >< / p > (without spaces obviously).

                I definitely pasted the link into the original posting. I'm wondering if I misplaced a chevron somewhere and it got thrown out by the parser - but I would have thought it would just have pasted the text in, rather than an empty link.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Sir

                  You should get an html error message in red - so maybe a missing chevron was not to blame.

                  1. TeeCee Gold badge
                    Thumb Up

                    Yup that's working. I just got a chevron barse-ackwards elsewhere and got the Red Bar of Incompetance thrown at me.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Links have not been disabled. Once you have them, you have them everywhere.

            Unless you have found a bug of course.

            Here is something I did earlier ...

            1. TeeCee Gold badge
              Happy

              >Here is something I did earlier ...

              Something in a new tab no less. Marvellous! I can carry on being a lazy git and clicking on links without thinking now......

      3. BristolBachelor Gold badge
        Thumb Up

        I hadn't really thought about this, but what is the chance that the Reg's page impressions are from all the page loads/reloads when people vote? Please, pretty please can the voting be done on the same page? (At work only about 50% page requests get through the firewall sometimes, and even then may take a minute to load, so voting is really expensive for me. Bloomin VPNs and firewalls and low-capacity links :(

        Oh, I don't mind a link opening in the same tab; I normally middle click links anyway to open in a new tab.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: page load upvote | downvote

          the reload is a small fraction of a per cent! However, we are planning a code release in coming weeks which will purge the site of this annoyance.

          1. Reginald Gerard

            Re: page load upvote | downvote - Ergonomic tip/request

            Hello Drewc, first off, I agree, let the voting work from the comments page, why load a new one? It works well in the New York Times comments. Another thing that has annoyed me with the voting, has been the fact that the "Return to Forum" link is at the bottom of the page. I have the mouse in my hand to locate and click 'Up Vote' / 'Down Vote' so letting go to click on backspace is one action too much. Scrolling down the page to get to the "Return to Forum" is also a pain in the butt, I've already read the entry, that is why I am voting, and I shouldn't have to go to the bottom of the page to return. Please move the RtF to the top of the page.

            Thanks and regards,

            Reg

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: page load upvote | downvote - Ergonomic tip/request

              I have upvoted your comment to remind my self of positioning... Yep, makes sense, but only if we are retaining new-page load for voting - which we are not. See our Forum Wishlist - complete with roadmap.

              1. jake Silver badge

                Re: page load upvote | downvote - Ergonomic tip/request

                I have downvoted your comment to remind yourself of my position ... Nope, makes no sense, because y'all are retaining new-page load for voting - which is senseless. I've reviewed the Forum Wishlist - complete with roadmap - but I still disagree.

                Hint: People likely to vote aren't seeing advertising. Save yourself some bandwidth.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Re: page load upvote | downvote - Ergonomic tip/request

                  jake we are not retaining new-page load for voting - we just haven't discarded it yet.

                  1. jake Silver badge
                    Pint

                    Re: page load upvote | downvote - Ergonomic tip/request

                    I miss-read yours. I usually know better than to post before my first cup of coffee. Removed "down vote", not that I think you give a rat's patoot about "votes" anymore than I do ;-)

                    ANYway, mea culpa. My apologies, this round's on me.

        2. nichobe
          Pint

          This really irks me. Page voting inline would be a huge plus. It also would stop it asking you to log in after each vote.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I see Approve | Reject buttons in article forum pages. Not sure that I should. I hit approve button today - it worked. I hit approve button for a comment to another story - pulled up 404 message.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Commentards need upgraded accounts to post html

    In this trial we are doing this manually. I have upgraded Shaun's account

  4. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

    Approve/Reject

    Oh, are we not supposed to play with those? I have been "approving" any comments that didn't look libelous on threads I encounter. Sorry if I am not supposed to touch them!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Approve/Reject

      That is just fine, Trevor. But I think this is an unintended consequence of change. Certainly wasn't specced to be for story comments

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Interesting tidbit:

        I had to "approve" your comment. Is your user account not set for auto-moderation?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          It is a bug - or a feature. Comments I make using our CMS are not auto-accepted. Comments I make via the public interface are. It is on my snag list.

  5. BristolBachelor Gold badge

    CR / LF

    Someone else posted something about this somewhere else, but I can't find it right now. Anyway it seems to be a bug, so lives here.

    Typing in a new post (no cut/paste) and pressing Preview leaves a blank line between all lines in the preview, and also changes the text in the edit box the same. (IE8 on XP) I don't know what is does when the text is then Submitted; let's find out without a preview.

    1. Vic

      > a blank line between all lines

      I believe this is down to the way the text is parsed (and possibly even stored).

      Each line of text you write becomes surrounded with <p> and </p> tags. This creates the blank line.

      For a little while after the code was changed, these tags were missing from posts (so it all ended up in one big jumble). Once that bug had been fixed, the jumbled posts were not sorted out. This leads me to suspect that the line-breaks are inserted during initial parsing, and stored like that too.

      But I could be wrong on that :-)

      Vic.

  6. Sir Runcible Spoon

    Sir

    You may need an auto-wrap for stuff that idiots post with no spaces in it </sheepish grin>

    such as

    spamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspamspam

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      I'll bleat to that one too......

  7. Renato

    Mobile version

    No thread status icons (such as whether the thread is sticky, locked etc) are shown on the mobile version of the user forums.

    And just now I have noticed: it isn't possible to add icons to posts using the mobile interface!

  8. Vic

    That's broken it...

    "Newest" and "oldest" thread ordering now appear to be identical...

    Vic.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Fixed

      Thanks for the catch

  9. stuartnz

    Þe bug list

    Just testing to make sure this thread could display a thorn properly. It seemed important given the thread title. :)

  10. Alan Mackenzie
    Boffin

    Missing word in the comments guidelines.

    "We don't the forums to turn nasty and uncivil." is missing the word "want". Please fix it!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Missing word in the comments guidelines.

      Done. Thanks for the catch.

  11. Ben Tasker

    Thread, Newest, Oldest

    Might just be me, but if I visit a thread that I previously sorted in "Newest" order when it loads the 'Newest' button will be grayed as though it has remembered my preference but the page is still in thread order.

    Means I have to click 'thread', wait for that to load and then whack 'Newest' again. Yeah I know, two extra clicks *grumble grumble*

    I await suggestion that I auto-fornicate and just put up with it :D

  12. Sir Runcible Spoon

    Sir

    Just found a doozer :)

    I looked through the features forum, sorted on new posts.

    Chose a post I wanted to view the previous comments on, so clicked on the # (which took me to the post on it's own).

    I then clicked on the little doohicky dash thing that usually takes me to the very same post but in the main flow of comments and got a loop going..

    this is the url it gave me:

    http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/2/2012/01/23/BristolBachelor_New_forum_Wishlist/#c_1305135

  13. TeeCee Gold badge

    Just clicked on....

    ... the "is IT service being destroyed by due process ?" topic by Denarius and got a 500 error....

    Someone's managed to b0rk something publicly at last!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Just clicked on....

      Oh bugger, thank's for the catch.

  14. jake Silver badge

    I'm probably missing something ...

    In "http://forums.theregister.co.uk/my/forums/" I have two lists.

    One is the forums I've created. The other is the forums I've commented in or stared.

    Surely the forums I've created should be included in the Venn diagram of the forums I've commented in?

    There is a reason that decent Usenet News software chose a tree format ...

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: I'm probably missing something ...

      I noticed that as well. It seemed like an odd design decision.

      The topics you've started are also listed under the topics you've posted in, so you also get the link underneath telling you how many posts have been made since your last one.

      I guess it does make sense though. If you've started a topic, you're more likely to care about it, so you might want to see it at the top.

  15. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    New bug discovered in Topic Titles

    I've found a bug with your new Topic titles. Whereas comment titles don't seem to accept html (I've tried), Thread titles don't strip it out the same way.

    So if you go to the Reg Matters forum, you'll see this topic I created. From the forum the title looks like a clickable link, but you can't click on it, and don't get the 'hand' pointer when you hover over it.

    So I appear to have broken it.

    The url is: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/02/21/I_aint_Spartacus_a_hrefhttpwwwbbccoukBBCa/

    So it's taken the link tag I put into the title and stripped out the '<'s and '/'s, but still seems to be operating as some kind of botched link.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Just to add

      In my 'My Forums' page, the new topic title turns up as a black semi-link. It's no blue/red like all the other hyperlinks, and you don't get the pointer turning into a cursor, when you hover over it. Nor does the url appear at the bottom of the screen.

      However when you mouse over it, the colour changes to grey and the underline appears, like a link.

      Clicking on it doesn't work either.

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      More to add

      You can also use tags in the Topic titles, but not in the post titles, which I suspect is an error. See my topic here.

      Note that I used: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ without the < a > href tags this time, and they don't seem to have had the same effect. The title is a working hyperlink in the forums, and shows up properly on the 'My Forums' page as well.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: More to add

        Created a new topic with just the title: www.bbc.co.uk

        No problems. It displays as a proper link.

        Also the title of the first post, which should be the same as the topic title in all 3 cases seems to be showing what I typed. It's just that post titles seem to ignore html, whereas topic titles don't.

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: Re: More to add

          Just created another test topic. I suspect it's irrelevant, if you're just going to disable html in topic titles, as you do in post titles.

          The topic is here.

          This one has no title at all on the forum front page. All it is was a link to the El Reg front page, where I hadn't filled in the link text element. You get this url for the page:

          http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/02/22/I_aint_Spartacus_a_hrefhttpwwwtheregistercouka/

          The other interesting behaviour is that it doesn't show up at all on my list of topics started in the 'my forums' page. There's not even a blank line where it could go.

          Also, when TeeCee posted in there, I got a message in the section underneath the topics I've started - in a line, on its own, that said: "1 post since you last posted". There was no link to click on with this, or even space at the start of the line for an invisible one.

          1. TeeCee Gold badge
            WTF?

            Consistancy, we've heard of it.....

            I see that Bristol Bachelor has just created a topic in "Science" called "SPACE the final frontier."

            In the User Sections page, it shows as "Latest Topic" with it's markup exposed in the title. Going into "Science" it shows as a topic with "SPACE" in bold. Going into the topic itself, the FP has the same title (of course) with its markup exposed as seen in the User Sections page.

            Whichever route is eventually taken on the whole "markup in titles" thing, the presentation should at least be consistant......

  16. TeeCee Gold badge

    Here's another one.

    Just found a nasty "feature" while composing that last reply.

    My login just did the timeout thang without my noticing and the post preview stopped doing markup. I reckon that either interpretation of markup in preview should be governed purely by the user email, regardless of login state, or the password prompt needs to move to be required for preview if markup is detected.

    I only figured out what was going on when I hit "Submit" and got the prompt. 'Til then it just seemed broken.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Here's another one.

      You also can't sort topics by newest/thread, if you're not logged in, as the drop-down box at the top disappears. This is particularly odd when you go from your 'my forums' list to a comments thread from Reg Hardware, and you aren't logged in on that domain, so can't check out the latest post.

      I vaguely recall that someone may have raised that bug already, but can't find it. So sorry if I'm repeating.

  17. TeeCee Gold badge
    WTF?

    Sumfin's up.

    Dunno what's happened today, but the format on the User Forums section and its dependants has gone fubar in IE8 (yes, I know).

    <Quick check>

    Oooo, Chrome too, so unusually it ain't an IE thang.

    The bit with the boxes and ads on the right is overlapping the main section with the headings and forum stuff on the left. Looks like someone's got hold of the fixed-width bit and squeezed the two sides together, if you see what I mean.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sumfin's up.

      Ok - we'll check it out.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Sumfin's up.

        Not certain where TeeCee's looking, but at the moment I see the same thing only in this location:

        http://forums.theregister.co.uk/section/forums/vulture/reg_stuff/

        (Copy & pasting the link is faster than making it clickable by hand ...)

        1. TeeCee Gold badge

          Re: Sumfin's up.

          And that's the only place I see it today, whereas yesterday it was in many places.

          Odd. I wonder if it's the removal of HTML parsing in topic titles producing some long, spaceless titles which force the title box wider?

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: Sumfin's up.

            For the record,

            http://forums.theregister.co.uk/section/forums/vulture/reg_stuff/

            is still rendering funky.

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  19. This post has been deleted by its author

  20. jake Silver badge

    Any chance of shuffling "locked topics" to the bottom of the listie?

    Only stands to reason.

    While I'm at it, how about changing the "locked" icon to a picture of a lock with the universal red circle with a slash through it over a lock. Not all of us have perfect vision, c.f. ElReg commentards regarding this article

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Any chance of shuffling "locked topics" to the bottom of the listie?

      Come to think of it ... Add an icon at the bottom to view the "locked topics". There is no real reason that they should be viewable, unless the viewer is interested. Save us all some bandwidth.

  21. nichobe

    posting pages to google+

    When posting links to ElReg articles to google+ an image appears that has no relevance to the article. A quick X dismisses it but it would be nice to include the correct pic when posting.

    example

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/07/windows_xp_two_years_until_support_ends/

    not sure if its a Register or Google+ issue but it should be looked into.

    Top articles - keep up the good work.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: posting pages to google+

      Hmm. We don't do anything for Google +, so I am guessing G+ is grabbing. We'll have to look up.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Navigating [and bloody login cookies!]

    My two biggest gripes:

    1: Navigation between "my posts" and article comments

    Can you do something to improve this, so it's less of a ball-ache to view comments I've made "in context"? If I login and visit the "my posts" link, I can view all my inane comments and see the upvotes/downvotes. However there's no way to easily return to view that comment in the context of the article itself. eg. to see if there have been replies. Clicking on "posted on..." links back to the comment's upvote/downvote page and there are links to the article itself and the beginning of the comments page, but the obvious link to comment in context is not there UNLESS my comment was a reply to someone else's comment, in which case there is a wee curly arrow reply icon next to my comment which DOES link back to viewing the comment in context. It's all very inconsistent and confusing.

    2: Login cookie:

    I've tried this across umpteen browsers, a couple of OSes and several devices and I can never stay logged in for more than a couple of hours. Can you either fix your login cookie, or replace the accompanying text to better reflect reality. Maybe "Keep me logged in for a random short period of time"?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Navigating [and bloody login cookies!]

      I guess we are going to have to look more closely into login cookies. Trouble is, they work just fine for me and for the devs... we'll think of some tests.

      On navigation - we'll put our thinking caps on.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      My posts / posting in context - your wish is granted.

      In my posts Click on the "posted" timestamp link to see in action.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Broken link?

    Is the following article accessible for anyone else? It just results in a "Connection closed by remote server" here, all other articles are unaffected.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/19/googleio_code_jam/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Broken link?

      It is accessible to me. Browser issue?

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Turned out to be a mis-firing ad/spy blocking filter. The 'googlei' portion of the url matched a block list.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Cool - one less bug to hunt down!

  25. AndyJenk
    Unhappy

    White Paper discrimination

    I am unable to download the white paper on cloud security because I am retired and I must supply my business address. Why am I barred from finding out how to secure my data?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: White Paper discrimination

      Unintended consequence, Andy. We have a number of cloud security papers. Tell us which one you want and we'll email it you. Meanwhile, we'll figure out a better way of handling download requests from retired people.

  26. BlueGreen

    front page now broken with jscript disabled

    As it says, really. Looks fine in IE8, opera, & FX10 with noscript disabled. With noscript working, top part is a bit of a jumbled mess.

    Something linked to your new datacentre section?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: front page now broken with jscript disabled

      thanks for the pointer - fixed a few hours after you posted.

  27. j8048188
    Unhappy

    BOFH Broken?

    With the new structure, I can find the BOFH collection (under the data centre) but it does not list the entire archive anymore. (Episodes 13-17 of 2011 are gone).

    1. JudeKay (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: BOFH Broken?

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/data_centre/bofh/ should be there

  28. jake Silver badge

    On the "my (open) topics" page, I've been seeing a lot of ...

    ... indications of new posts, but with no new post. Are phantom posts a bug? A feature? Here's a link to the latest "open topic" that displayed this behavior:

    http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/02/13/jake_Last_game_I_played_was_Wumpus_/

    1. jake Silver badge

      Another here, today: (was Re: On the "my (open) topics" page ... )

      http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/latest/2012/03/30/jake_Gnawing_on_blubber_And_still_testing_the_forum_/

      1. jake Silver badge

        Two more.

        http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/latest/2012/04/03/Joe_17_TomTom_Leap_Year_Bug/

        http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/latest/2012/03/26/Toxteth_OGravy_Warlord_of_Mars/

        1. jake Silver badge

          Three more (probably).

          I say "probably" because I haven't gone looking ... might help with the debug process. Gut feeling is it's a calendar issue; it seems to be following itself up the backlog. Maybe the "read thread/subject" flag is resetting itself after 180-ish days?

          http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/latest/2012/02/26/JustaKOS_Could_vegetarians_eat_a_test_tube_burger/

          http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/latest/2012/03/21/Drewc_Forums_front_page_flipped_to_httpforumstheregistercouk/

          http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/latest/2012/02/13/jake_You_mean_like_Self_Storage/

          As a side note, what kind of sad person marks down posts specifically trying to help the staff perfect a forum that the thumbs-updowner seems to enjoy? For shame.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Three more (probably).

            Thanks, jake.

            We will can thumbs down voting. Not going to waste our time policing saddos like this.

            1. jake Silver badge

              Re: Three more (probably).

              If you choose to get rid of "down", there is no need for "up". Get rid of both, and bring back the banter.

              While I'm at it, bring back "Most Read/Commented" ... Same reasoning.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              @drewc - Re: Three more (probably).

              Are you seriously considering canning voting because one twat seems to have the hots for jake?

              Shame if you do - downvoting at least allows the option of expressing displeasure with an idiotic post in a way that doesn't derail the thread.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Downvotes

                The trouble with downvotes, is the tendency of people to mark down posts they disagree with as opposed to posts that are trolling or are idiotic.

                The downvotes-war-by-proxy then spills into comments as in "all those people who downvoted me / you are sad windows lusers".

                Now, we could make people say why they are downvoting a comment - but isn't that a bit creepy, or we could suspend people who misuse the downvote - as with the guy picking on jake - or we could limit the number of downvotes someone can use in a month, or turn it in to some site currency game - e.g. you pay to downvote, you are are paid when you upvote. Or we could just drop them altogether. Many big sites just have upvotes - it just might just make the atmosphere a little better.

                Maybe an "unfollow / ignore" button would work better - although how that would work with anonymous cowards, I have not tried to figure out.

                1. jake Silver badge
                  Pint

                  Re: Downvotes

                  "The trouble with downvotes, is the tendency of people to mark down posts they disagree with as opposed to posts that are trolling or are idiotic."

                  Interesting observation. Speaking for myself, all are valid reasons to downvote. The saddo serial downvoting me, even, is making a valid protest in the great scheme of things.

                  "Now, we could make people say why they are downvoting a comment - but isn't that a bit creepy"

                  As a long term moderator of mailing lists and Usenet, no. Just no. Entirely too creepy.

                  "or we could suspend people who misuse the downvote - as with the guy picking on jake"

                  No. If downvotes are allowed, my fanboi should be allowed. No skin off my teeth.

                  "or we could limit the number of downvotes someone can use in a month"

                  Only if you similarly limit upvotes. And even then, what with proxies ...

                  "or turn it in to some site currency game - e.g. you pay to downvote, you are are paid when you upvote."

                  That'd start another element gaming the system, just because they can.

                  "Or we could just drop them altogether."

                  My vote. They are pretty meaningless, when you think about it. Or leave 'em be, if they aren't causing you lot at ElReg too many fits. There is a reason I've never emailed you about this stuff, and kept it in forum ;-)

                  "Many big sites just have upvotes - it just might just make the atmosphere a little better."

                  All bright & fuzzy unicorns, rainbows & stars? Are you channeling HappyNet[tm]? Techies hang out here, for fsck's sake! Most of us have thicker skin than that. Hazard of the profession ...

                  "Maybe an "unfollow / ignore" button would work better - although how that would work with anonymous cowards, I have not tried to figure out."

                  Bozo filtering begins and ends with wet-ware. I suspect that if you were to point out that the ACs aren't actually AC, and that you have their IP addresses, some of this silliness would stop. But then again, there are always proxies for the truly determined ...

                  Ah, well. Relax & have a homebrew. Works for me :-)

          2. Vic

            Re: Three more (probably).

            > what kind of sad person marks down posts specifically trying to help the staff

            As I've said elsewhere, there are certain individuals who will downvote anything they find in your posting history.

            Whilst I like the idea of voting, I'd also like to see a public list of who voted for what; a "put yuor money where your mouth is" approach...

            Vic.

    2. jake Silver badge

      Six months later (was: Re: On the "my (open) topics" page, I've been seeing a lot of ...)

      See: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/1777092

      Year old unsquashed bug ...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Six months later (was: On the "my (open) topics" page, I've been seeing a lot of ...)

        jake, this is a weird one. We are not ignoring you - but have been unable to reproduce this bug. This means assigning more time to hunt down - which we will do, but not yet!

  29. jake Silver badge

    Two more.

    Definitely following the calendar.

    http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/latest/2012/03/03/Dominic_Connor_Quant_Headhunter_What_jobs_in_2020_/

    http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/02/24/Haku_Comic_Book_Men/

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmm

    It's a strange little metagame, replete with features without interface. I suspect that people raging about it probably need to relax a bit. The levels of sheer silliness, banter and facetious comments on what is far from a serious site mean that comments are a bit of a rough and tumble rather than a serious critique of the validity of complex ideas, anyway. Hell, most of the articles are rather silly and fall notably short of journalism (often on purpose, admittedly, so no fault and no blame there).

    TL;DR: Y SO SRS?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmm

      It'd probably help if I specified that I was talking about the vexed issue of downvotes, rather than anything else. Duh, apologies.

  31. the real BOFH
    FAIL

    BOFH broken

    Hi

    BOFH is not sorted in chronological order and so is difficult to find latest edition

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: BOFH broken

      hmm. Maybe hit shift reload, clear cache? We moved BOFH column to a different section - and different layout template. That was the case for two weeks.

      As of yesterday 10 October, BOFH is sorted in reverse chronological order, just like it was before, only this time you can trawl through 10 pages to access every column we have published on The Reg.

  32. BlueGreen

    not exactly a bug but unwelcome behaviour nonetheless

    at least if you're interweb paranoid like me.

    Just posted on <http://forums.channelregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/11/06/dont_bet_on_microsoft/>, found I had to enable javascript to do this. Precisely, I had to enable js to enable cookies. If you wish to (IMO unnecessarily) link cookie setting to JS support then I shan't argue, but it did surprise me.

  33. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

    Possible issue with the "edit" time window

    I think you may need to stick some extra time into this process.

    I started editing a post, but the "submit" was rejected because the time limit had expired. I think there needs to be an extension of the edit window once a user starts the edit process or the function may not be that helpful :)

    FF

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Possible issue with the "edit" time window

      You can edit it for 5 minutes after posting, but starting to edit doesn't extend that currently. The simplest thing would be to up limit to 10 minutes.

      Added to the list.

      1. Vic

        Re: Possible issue with the "edit" time window

        > You can edit it for 5 minutes after posting

        How?

        Vic.

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: Possible issue with the "edit" time window

          Vic,

          There's an edit button next to the Reply button. But you apparently only get it if you're a gold-badger. I guess they hadn't rolled it out to silver-vultures yet. Ten beta testers instead of a hundred or so.

          1. Vic

            Re: Possible issue with the "edit" time window

            > But you apparently only get it if you're a gold-badger.

            Ah, right. The email I got said it was available to Silver Badgers as well - but I can't spot it :-)

            Vic.

            1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
              Happy

              Re: Possible issue with the "edit" time window

              Sadly silver badgers have to make do with this, until El Reg's elves have got themselves sorted out.

      2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Possible issue with the "edit" time window

        Drew,

        Just tried to edit a long post, realising I'd run out of time, I made 2 changes then hit submit. No probs, then went back and did the same. OK. The third time I tried it timed out. So the limit is 5 minutes from original post. The real answer is I should have proofread it before posting, as it was a touch long.

        10 minutes seems a reasonable compromise.

        Although even though it's only 5 minutes (maybe 10), should there be an automatic thingy added saying edited by user?

  34. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

    Gotcha or policy re. deleted comments?

    I deleted a post, and that was my only post to a topic. To me, that topic shouldn't show up in the "my topics" list, but that's maybe a matter of interpretation. Maybe one for the "things we fix when we get bored" list?

    (there is a slight delta here - I tried to edit that post first, but then got the edit rejected as the time window has expired, not sure if that is of any consequence).

    FF

    1. Vic

      Re: Gotcha or policy re. deleted comments?

      > To me, that topic shouldn't show up in the "my topics" list

      I actually prefer that it does.

      I might have deleted my only contribution - usually because it's attracting downvotes from people who emote rather than think - but it's still a topic that has attracted my attention enough to want ot post to it, so I still like to see what's going on.

      Vic.

  35. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

    Thoughts about ignoring "anonymous"

    Even anon users are logged in as someone, so maybe you could work with that when someone clicks the "ignore" button? You can still keep the representation of that specific UID away from anyone else to preserve the anonymity, yet have an "ignore" that does what it says on the tin (so to speak).

    Having said that, I haven't found a real reason to ignore someone. I rather know what they're trying to say behind my back, and the site's culture and structure tends to eventually chuck out the truly objectionable characters anyway (part of the reason it has become the popular hangout it is), so for me the ignore thing is a less relevant function.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Thoughts about ignoring "anonymous"

      We have thought about ignoring anonymous posters - and we're still thinking.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Thoughts about ignoring "anonymous"

        Drew,

        There is a way that you could use this to identify who the anon is - assuming they ever use their real handle on posts. You'd have to be pretty determined to do it, and not have too much of a life...

        One pooter logged on as you, with your anon post on ignore. Another pooter not logged in, then you compare forums until you find a post from a user that's missing from the other PC. Aha, we've found the handle of our anon friend.

        Of course you could stop this by handling the anon posts and handle posts separately for ignoring purposes. Or just decide that it's too much effort for too little risk.

        But there might be a risk to regular posters who go anon to dish the dirt on their own employers, as happens occasionally. And the big ones with online reputation management bods might even be determined enough to go digging.

        Am I being paranoid here? Or am I not being paranoid enough...

  36. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

    A 404 that isn't, found in Cafè Vulture

    Cafè Vulture / Chew the Fat.

    I have a feeling this was an unclean and probably a tad hasty removal of a topic that I would have considered objectionable (as most decent people, I would imagine). The problem is that it seems to have left some residue, and a cache refresh doesn't help - this stuff is still served.

    Page URL: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/11/24/MyBackDoor_The_male_psyche_and_rape/

    What is produced:

    Gone

    The requested resource

    /forum/1/2012/11/24/MyBackDoor_The_male_psyche_and_rape/

    is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all references to this resource.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A 404 that isn't, found in Cafè Vulture

      Thanks for the tip.

  37. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    New Editing Bug

    I've just spotted a bug in editing. When I edit a post, and hit submit, it takes me to the post's own page, rather than back to the thread in context.

    However, what it takes you to is the page of the old, un-edited post. When I checked I'd got the change right, it wasn't showing. Until I checked it again via my posts list.

  38. Vimes

    Not sure if this is a bug or whether I'm missing something, but I seem to have lost the ability to post any HTML as the tags just get displayed when previewing the post

    (I only tend to use tags like b and i - not the sort of thing that should cause any issues I think - and I would prefer to avoid posting messages that I can't edit if it's going to be poorly laid out because of HTML tags being displayed instead of actually formatting the text).

    I also seem to have lost the ability to start new topics.

    If this is just a boneheaded mistake on my part and I have missed something then please could somebody point me in the right direction? If its not and it's also not a bug then what did I do to be limited in this way?

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Clicking on your username, that's because you joined today, and only have 5 posts. Which is odd, given I'm certain I've seen your posts before. Can you see more than 5 of your previous posts? As they've disappeared for me.

      The Reg has made you an un-person...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      privileges removed

      recently we changed account privileges, awarding by commentard handle, rather than by account. There is a discussion of this contained within this thread.

      It looks like you changed your public handle recently.

      The good news is that you can start topics after having five comments accepted under your current handle.

      The bad news is that you need to have 100 comments accepted before we allow live html.

      I will check what changes if any have been any recent changes about html - I thought that sprung into live after five public comments accepted too.

      Also our house rules / FAQ may give you some more pointers.

  39. Swizzer
    Facepalm

    Android app won't start

    Hi,

    Since a few weeks now, I can't use the register app for android on any of my devices.

    WiFi, 3g same issue.

    Each time I try to run it, I get "page not found, please try again later", then the app closes.

    I am based in Switzerland if that makes any difference.

    Works fine from a browser pc or android.

  40. Steve Knox

    New comments box on hardware pages seems buggy in Opera and IE

    When there are no comments, the box code looks like this (spaces added to stop site from actually parsing HTML):

    < div class="comment_block">< /div>

    and indeed there is no link to post a comment. At first I thought comments were disabled, but upon returning to a page later, I saw the quote box with the number and link, and indeed the source for an article where comments have been posted looks like:

    < div class="comment_block">< div class="comments">< a class="count " title="View comments on this article" href="..../">22< /a>< div>< /div>

    Next I thought this was a script incompatibilty with Opera (12.13), but it also happens in IE 9 (only other browser I currently have on this machine, sorry.)

    1. Steve Knox

      Re: New comments box on hardware pages seems buggy in Opera and IE

      Oh yeah, just remembered I now have an iPhone (again, sorry). This is also how it looks in Safari: no initial comments link.

  41. BlueGreen

    New site layout slightly knackered w/o jscript

    <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/08/game_column_feb/> auto-borks with images not resizing so spreading out over right margin. You surely don't need js to resize images...

    On win2k8, browser is FX 10.0.12 ESR.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: New site layout slightly knackered w/o jscript

      Different parts of the site will have different widths; our web team opted to use JS to resize pics as required.

      The print version of the page doesn't require JS TTBOMK

      eg: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/08/game_column_feb/print.html

      C.

  42. StanBumps
    Black Helicopters

    No way to create a new thread?!

    I can find no button or link when signed in to create a new forum thread. This might be something on my side as I see others creating threads, but I've tried across IE 10, Firefox 19 and Opera 12 all to no avail.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No way to create a new thread?!

      So, StanBumps, you currently have 4 comments accepted for publication.

      Check our house rules

      <snip>

      Create a new topic

      You can start a new topic if you have at least five posts accepted and published. (Withdrawing your fifth post will remove the permission.) After your fifth post is accepted it takes up to one hour for the new permission to take effect. Click on Forums home page log-in. The Create a new topic link lives in the Forums Box on the right hand side of the page.

      </snip>

      The five comments threshold is there to catch out spammers.

      1. StanBumps
        Thumb Up

        Re: No way to create a new thread?!

        Ah, I see, my apologies.

        Thanks Drewc for your response.

  43. BenM 29 Silver badge

    expand/minimise comment behavior

    Hi,

    The behaviour of expand/minimise comment behaviour appears to have changed in the last day or so.

    On desktop/Ubuntu/chrome 23.0.1271.17 it works as expected - hit the expand/minimise link and comment expands/contracts with no fuss.

    On galaxy sIII with T-Mobile jelly bean and chrome 25.0.1364.169 expand increases the space properly but shrinks the font size from small to miniscule. Minimise reduces the expanded space a bit but the font remains shrunken.

    On Windows 7 chrome 24.0.132.57 the link behaves properly.

    This could be a chrome bug rather than El Reg... but you are better placed to report that than me.

    As an old-ish git I would like the font size to remain fixed or i will have to start carrying a magnifying glass as well as the phone!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: expand/minimise comment behavior

      We'll check it out,

      thanks,

      Drew

  44. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

    Small edit tweak - feature or bug?

    I noticed that the anon status of a post cannot be changed when you haul it back into edit mode. If the author forgets to tick the "post anon" box (or has done the opposite), the only option at present is to pull the post completely because the changed status of the tick box is not recognised.

    Feature? :)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Small edit tweak - feature or bug?

      Fred, this is not an intended feature. We'll fix.

  45. jake Silver badge

    Dunno how far back in the thread ElReg looks ...

    http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/1777093

  46. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    Badge-y bug

    Dear El Reg,

    It looks like your badge-making script is sadly not working properly. I noticed this post complaining about lack of bronze badge, and then three more people in another thread: here, here and here.

    Remember what happened to Microsoft when they forgot to keep running their browser choice script. Just think how much the EU might fine you for failing to badge-ify your commentards as promised!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Badge-y bug

      We'll get on the case.

      1. Omgwtfbbqtime
        Thumb Up

        Re: Badge-y bug

        Thanks Drew, received the confirm last night.

        Now to find something else to rant about.

        /me searches for global warming thread.

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
          Happy

          Re: Badge-y bug

          Ah, you've been enobled. Admitted to the order of the bronze vulture.

          By the way, turkey vultures cool themselves by urinating on their own legs. I believe that this is obligatory, once you've joined the Register's secret club. You might smell a bit, but you'll be the coolest cat in the computer room...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Badge-y bug - fixed

      As of April 8.

      Thanks for the catch.

  47. Dave 62

    I can't log in. (Trying to report a post which is obviously spam from a crank/vapour ware pedlar, I'll let you guess who) and I'm told I have to be logged in. I also, on the right side little log-in box get "Welcome, since when?. (Not you? Log in here.)" I've always had the Welcome, (with no name).

    Anyway I try to log in and it don't work. No wrong password message, just keeps refreshing the same screen.

    ur website is broked.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      This is a new one

      Forwarding to our tech team, who might contact you by email for more details.

  48. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
    Trollface

    HTML posting problem

    When I try to post comments with the <blink>tag</blink>, it doesn't seem to work. Please could El Reg look into this.

    I noticed your article on how Firefox were phasing it out, and thought it needed a last hurrah.

    Pwetty pllllleeeeeeeeaaassse.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: HTML posting problem

      No. Please do NOT enable blink. Like disco, it still sucks.

      On the other hand, it's a useful "nothing to see here, move on" wetware filter ;-)

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
        Happy

        Re: HTML posting problem

        Spoilsport!

  49. This post has been deleted by its author

  50. This post has been deleted by its author

  51. Dave 62

    Click "withdraw"

    Click "return to forum"

    page keeps reloading.

    same if you click the second "withdraw" (and by the way the withdraw confirmation screen is not very.. ergonomic (or a similar word to that))

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Thanks for the spot?

      Browser /OS?

      1. Dave 62

        Re: Thanks for the spot?

        sorry, I keep forgetting when I post here.

        Win 7 and FF 22.0

  52. thosrtanner

    Continually being asked to approve cookies

    Started today. Pretty much every time I open a page from my RSS feed, I get a little box saying do I want cookies (it would be more honest to say "this site uses cookies whether you like it nor not. if you don't, go away)

    1. Matt@ElReg

      Re: Continually being asked to approve cookies

      Hi thosrtanner,

      Do you mean the little bar at the foot of the page?

      The text reads "The Register uses cookies. Some may have been set already. Read about managing our cookies. Please click the button to accept our cookies. If you continue to use the site, we'll assume you're happy to accept the cookies anyway."

      The bar should stick around until you dismiss it by clicking "I'm fine with this", and then shouldn't bother you again. It does in itself require a cookie though (to remember that you're ok with cookies!). If this cookie is deleted, the bar will reappear.

      1. thosrtanner

        Re: Continually being asked to approve cookies

        Yes, that bar. It keeps coming up. I thought I'd clicked "I'm OK with this" several times today, unless my glasses need fixing

        1. Matt@ElReg

          Re: Continually being asked to approve cookies

          Thanks thosrtanner,

          We did roll out some site changes the other day, so it's possible we've broken something. I can't replicate the problem at the moment though. What OS & Browser were you using?

          1. thosrtanner

            Re: Continually being asked to approve cookies

            firefox 22 on windows 7.

          2. thosrtanner

            Re: Continually being asked to approve cookies

            Still getting this problem (firefox 23 now and windows 7)

            1. thosrtanner

              Re: Continually being asked to approve cookies

              appears to have magically fixed itself today

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Re: Continually being asked to approve cookies

                I am not sure that we did anything!

                1. thosrtanner
                  Unhappy

                  Re: Continually being asked to approve cookies

                  And it's unfixed itself today :-(

                2. thosrtanner

                  Re: Continually being asked to approve cookies

                  I can reproduce this consistently by clicking on the red title bar. It (re)loads the front page and immediately pops up with a request for cookie confirmation

      2. thosrtanner

        Re: Continually being asked to approve cookies

        Still happening (firefox 22, windows 7) so it's not my fingers.

  53. Mark 85

    Bug or Feature?

    There's "google ads" that pop and cover the upper part of damned near every article. If I click the 'x', a white box is left still covering the upper part of the article... Is this me or you?

  54. Shades

    Invisible comments?

    In the comments to WAR ON PORN: UK flicks switch on 'I am a pervert' web filters I posted a reply to this comment, however now my reply appears to have become a bit shy! Checking in my "My Posts" section the comment still appears to be live (there is no "widthdrawn" associated with the comment), and indeed there is no "Comment removed by moderator/author" notification below the comment I replied to... but my post still isn't there. In case you can't check the actual contents of my comment, it was a Futurama reference too (like the comment I replied to) so I can't imagine it being it being removed for any legal reasons.

    Oh, and another thing, I realise that comment nesting is something thats probably being worked on as I type but it appears to be a little borked, nesting is all over the place!

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Happy

      Re: Invisible comments?

      If it's forget the blackjack and hookers, then I can see it. I'm afraid your attempt to build a cloaking device, for the invisible stealth-shed, appears to have failed...

      1. Shades

        Re: Invisible comments?

        Thats even stranger then as I still can't see it, either on my computer or, as I've just found out, on my phone! Will have to try logging out to see if I can see it...

      2. Shades

        Re: Invisible comments?

        Okay, if I log out I can see it, log back in and its gone again.

  55. joed
    WTF?

    comment section formatting bug

    Recently the comment section became virtually unusable when using FF/Waterfox (works fine on IE and Chrome but I'm not switching). Every comment/response becomes narrower (down to few letter per line). I'm not sure what's the matter (even enabled all scripting to test for noscript related issues). Any suggestions/fixes?

    1. Zola

      Re: comment section formatting bug

      I too am seeing the weird indenting in Firefox (on Win7, FF v22 and now also v23).

      I would vote for some form of indenting so that you can more easily see to which post a reply corresponds, but the current indenting seems excessive and even random - I replied to one post but my reply wasn't indented as expected. Other posts are indented more than other reply posts,but for no apparent reason.

      For example this thread: when sorted by Thread, the first post ("Ground", by petur) has two replies. The first reply (from AC, "Do you really think cheap knock-off..." etc.) is indented much more than the second reply from Phil O'Sophical. I don't get it - they're both replies to the original post.

  56. Richard 12 Silver badge

    The m.forums (mobile) version recently broke for iOS 6.1.3 on iPhone. (It's a work phone so I get what I'm given.)

    I can no longer type anything into the post title text at all.

    I still see the box itself, but can't get a cursor in there. Which is odd.

    Also the "Enter your comment" bit is in a huge box, which looks really silly next to the tiny text box for post title.

    The normal site works ok on iOS.

    - I've also found the Office 365 advert to be evil, it pops open extremely easily and once open, it covers part of the text entry field, including the Preview button and won't go away without changing page. Can you get them to fix the "close" button on the ad?

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Addendum: I cannot log in either.

      The new squared-off "one-line text entry" box doesn't work at all under the Safari on iPhone 4S.

      Please fix ASAP, or just put normal boxes back and stop messing with it?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Is this still a problem, Richard 12?

  57. Vimes

    I was connected to a VPN server located in Bucharest last night and whilst connected tried to view this website. One of the adverts on the right was just a stream of what looked like Chinese characters. Using google translate didn't help an awful lot unfortunately.

    My question is this: if I recall correctly ad networks have misbehaved in the past and can even be used to spread malware. Is there any way for you to check if there was anything wrong with the ads being displayed last night? I'm guessing that there isn't but thought I'd ask in case there was.

    1. Vimes

      Now it's happening again, and this time no VPN connection and on my office PC.

      Text displayed:

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      1. tony2heads
        Joke

        @Vimes

        Shame on using such bad language

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Weird - we'll have a look.

      BTW Google is the only ad network we use.

  58. joed

    browser.zoom.full FireFox option breaks El Reg comment system

    Just a follow up to my recent post on this bug (no responses, had to find the fix myself). browser.zoom.full (bout:config) option is such a great feature if FF (nothing worse than a website with small font where zooming in increases the font size and picture elements at the same time - and this makes them look ugly/low res). This option worked just fine until some recent change on theregister.co.uk site (waterfox got no update so it's the site). Why? I did not see any noteworthy change to site functionality. Please fix.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: browser.zoom.full FireFox option breaks El Reg comment system

      We recently moved the site from static to dynamic html - a few bugs in forums, including this one. Should be fixed now.

  59. Joey

    Third Para bug

    The first line of every third paragraph in the articles has a spurious line break in the middle of the line. Is this 'house style' or office cleaner?

    1. diodesign Silver badge

      Re: Third Para bug

      Are you running an ad blocker of some kind? I suspect: yes. The 3rd par break is where our advert would go.

      C.

  60. IT Hack

    Badges

    Not sure if it this is bug or not but my bronze badge seems to have done a runner...only noticed today....

  61. Vimes

    My last post has the following at the bottom of the post:

    & 1 thumbs down

    No big deal, but the ampersand seems to get displayed even when there are no up votes. Either that or there are missing up votes from the display (highly unlikely given the list in my posts list). This happens both when viewing a list of my own posts and when viewing the specific thread in question.

  62. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. diodesign Silver badge

      Re: Server not found - Firefox can't find the server at forums.theregister.co.uk.

      What's your DNS server/settings? What's your ISP? Is this all from the same internet connection, or even when you move between home/office/college/whatever?

      C.

  63. Haku

    Can you put the icon back on the left side of the post.

    Where it is supposed to be.

  64. Jamie Jones Silver badge

    Inline comments

    One of the rarely mentioned things I like about the reg site, is that it's fast, and the code iis well written.

    From big PCs to old age phones and overstressed cheapy tablets, the reg site always works well.

    I just tried the 'inline voting' on this old phone i'm currently using, and am pleased to report that the 'graceful fallback' for challenged devices works well.

    The only thing that still doesn't work with thidd phone is that I am unable to select a post icon!

    1. Darryl

      Re: Inline comments

      I like the inline voting. My only (small) complaint would be that every time you upvote/downvote, you get a new page load, which adds another page to your history, so you can't just back out to the original article, or El Reg's main page.

      Also, I see we still haven't worked out the random logout problem. After reading, and voting on a number of comments in the same article, all of a sudden, I'm told I have to log in to use this feature.

    2. Jamie Jones Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Inline comments

      Darryl, you are correct!

      It turns out that what I thought was "graceful fallback " for old browsers is the way it's done anyway.

      I was expecting some whizzo javascript/dynamic HTML setup!

  65. tony2heads
    Joke

    Azerbaijan

    I am the future president of Azerbaijan & I will get 70% of the votes

  66. ecofeco Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Works great!

    Thank you El Reg.

  67. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Banner

    Not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but today when I click the red / a.n.other colour 'The Register' banner at the top of a comments page this now takes me to http://forums.theregister.co.uk. It used to just go to the theregister.co.uk

    Its a shame as this is how I used to navigate the site - to read the headlines in my lunchtime

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Banner

      Definitely not a feature - and definitely not something I can reproduce myself. Forwarded to devs for perusal.

    2. Vulgar Vulture

      Re: Banner

      This should now be resolved.

      1. Minty

        Re: Banner

        just for those that care about the details ...

        We'd recently changed the base href urls from http://www.theregister.co.uk to //www.theregister.co.uk which will, eventually, help if/when we get around to implementing https ...

        Sadly, ie9 and below seems to struggle with such urls in a base href.

        We believe if you were seeing this problem, it was because you were using IE9 or below.

        In the short term, we've given IE the full http:// url, and noted that as something we need to fix more correctly before https can happen.

        Enjoy the weekend :)

        1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
          Thumb Down

          Re: Banner

          Minty, regarding the IE bug (and as you know, it is a bug, because what you are doing is part of the spec), see also this: http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2010/02/10/5a-missing-schema-double-download/

          Incidently, this browser-bug screws up the 'w3m' browser too :-( -it tries to use ftp instead of http (though only apparrently on submitting a form) - so don't blame me if your firewall is logging ftp attempts from me!

  68. bugalugs
    Happy

    New voting

    LIKE

  69. Haku

    Main logo link when on forums no longer points to www.theregister.co.uk

    Something broke in the last update, when on a forums.theregister.co.uk page all links that used to start with www.theregister now start with forums.theregister, meaning no links back to the front page of the site and almost all of the other links on the page give you a 404 page error.

  70. This post has been deleted by its author

  71. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm too daft to get hyperlinks to work.

    > You need to put in the code yourself. You are a techie. This is not hard.

    I'm a techie. This shouldn't be hard.

    But if the Preview is anything to go by, this <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/23/el_reg_forums_faq/">is not a fooking link</a>.

    What am I doing wrong? I've tried non-anonymous Preview, too. Do I have to have 100 non-anonymous posts (which I probably don't)? It says "In total, your 177 public posts..." so I should be ok, no?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not too daft...

      Yes, you need 100 non-anonymous posts. We introduced this in cautious mode. But maybe we can relax this now.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not too daft...

        Thanks, Drew. I wouldn't mind if you did.

  72. BlueGreen

    Date/time in comments is now date only.

    It was useful before. e.g. I just replied to an AC but couldn't say @AC 12:42 because it's just date now. So if there are multiple ACs in a day then that's stuffed that.

    Just curiously, what purpose is served by changing something that was fine, and more informative, before. I don't think the new (and handy) 10 minute editing window affects that significantly.

    ta

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Date/time in comments is now date only.

      I agree totally. It's a bit of javascript bling.

      Now, the time shows as '..a few minutes ago' etc. (for those of us readers unable to tell the time .....sigh)

      As you've noticed, without javascript (which is how I run things on my portable devices) , you just get the date and no time.

      A classic case of change with no advantages and just disadvantages.

      I've always commended the Reg website for being one of the 'cleanest' and fast (yet still design-rich) sites. Up until know, javascript 'enhances' have been low key and not a requirement.

      This change (which isn't even user-configurable scores a BIG black mark)

  73. spamspamspam

    New mobile layout

    (Posting in here as I don't seem to be able to create a new thread?)

    What's going on with the new mobile view? Complaints are:

    - It at least *feels* like it loads slower

    - The spinny Vulture icon covering the page while its loading is annoying/really disruptive - what's wrong with just letting the browser do what it normally does when loading a page?

    - You can't tell which stories you've read as links and visited links are the same colour

    - The comments button after a story appears to dump you randomly into the middle of the comments page, and the number of comments shown on the button doesn't appear to be right

    - Long comments pages break Chrome's UI a bit; normally you can just drag up & down a bit to show the brower's bar, but on those pages you have to scroll almost all the way to the top of the page before you can see it for some reason.

    - The icons at the top right look a bit blurry and hence budget.

    Is this picky? I know no-one really likes change but honestly I can't see any obvious improvements in the new layout!

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: New mobile layout

      - Stories which are off the main theregister.co.uk site don't load from the main page (e.g. "Biz PC market's looking healthy – but is it just an XPocalypse bounce?" on Channel Register).

      - Firefox on Android seems to get a bit confused regarding the back/forwards control and story links in other tabs.

      - Don't like the smaller comment icons. Bah, humbug.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: New mobile layout

        A thread dedicated to this has opened here.

        Thanks - this is one of the problems with mobile stuff - so many browsers, so many OSes. And desktop android emulators are, I am told, a PITA. We will be sure to check out site on FF on Android though.

        Noted about icons. Let's see what we can do here.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: New mobile layout

          I agree that the new mobile site is a step backwards. My gripes (mostly experienced with Boat browser on Android, but some also occur in the stock android browser and Chrome,.

          1. No followed link colour change.

          2. What spinny vulture icon? I didn't know it was there until I tried the site with Chrome.

          3. Some links occasionally fail to load anything - blank page with m.theregister.co.uk in the address bar. Separate but similar, seems to happen always when going back from comments to the article, but here, the address is the article's.

          4. Page position seems to get carried over when navigating either back or forward, so going for the comments link at the bottom of an article dumps you half way down the comments page. Happens mostly when going to/from a comments page.

          5. Double tap zoom is broken in different ways in different browsers, either doesn't do anything, or the text doesn't reflow. (Text has reflowed when a page is navigated back to).

          6. When leaving / returning to the home page, it looks like an animation has failed to display, a 10 pixel bar of the last page appears on the left hand side of the screen.

          7. On the comments page, the header bar (masthead and search/user/nav buttons) often get stuck at the top of the page while (or partially) when scrolling down the page.(sometimes also includes the browser address bar and tabs).

          Overall, not an improvement at all, makes reading the reg on the move much less pleasant. It feels like far too much flaky javascript is being used. I'm surprised that a topic hadn't been started on this topic, and I haven't reached the post quota to be able to start one either.

          Glad to know that you're working on the mobile site, and I hope these are useful in sqashing the bugs. And please restore some kind of followed link indication.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Re: New mobile layout

            thanks for the feedback. We are addressing most of the things that you raise over the next couple of weeks.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: New mobile layout

      Thanks for the feedback - and no you are not being picky.

      we are currently cleaning up the back-end code - and will set to UI improvements over the next couple of weeks.

      The idea behind the spinny vulture icon was to let people know something was going on in background. But this may to have backfired. Like you I think it makes the page load time seem slower.

      On visited links - can anyone tell me what sites actually use visited links on mobile views? (Our iPhone app does not - no-one minds there for instance.)

  74. jake Silver badge

    As long as you are commenting, Drewc ...

    Why does ElReg no longer feel a proper time-stamp on commentard posts is a good idea?

    Seems daft to me ...

    Just curious. Your site, your rules.

  75. Evil Auditor Silver badge

    Comments' time indication

    Now it shows immediately upon posting a comment An hour ago. Is it just me?

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Comments' time indication

      I dunno. Lets find out.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Comments' time indication

        Nope. It says "in the last few minutes", whatever that means.

        Hint to ElReg: Computers are rather good a timestamping stuff.

        1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

          Re: Comments' time indication

          jake, thanks for testing. Now my comments say again "in the last few minutes", too. Don't know what was wrong. Anyway, I still think we should go back to a proper timestamp.

          (jake, do you have a personal fan down-voting you?;-)

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: Comments' time indication

            "jake, do you have a personal fan down-voting you?"

            Probably several. For the most part, I ignore them. All they are doing is proving that ElReg's system of "voting" means absolutely nothing in the great scheme of things.

            1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

              Re: Comments' time indication

              "ElReg's system of "voting" means absolutely nothing in the great scheme of things"

              Quite right. Then again, in the great scheme of things neither our comments mean much more...

              1. jake Silver badge

                Re: Comments' time indication

                Precisely. Did you even spend time on Usenet, Evil Auditor?

                I see commentarding on ElReg as background radiation ...

                1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

                  Re: Comments' time indication

                  Usenet, not anymore. Now I'm content with El Reg commentarding. Why even this? Don't know really, maybe for a bit of distraction during work hours.

                  1. jake Silver badge

                    Re: Comments' time indication

                    I typoed "even". I meant "ever".

                    Your answer answered my question. Background radiation ;-)

                    1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

                      Re: Comments' time indication

                      Exactly :-) But, to be honest, I got some useful information from Usenet on very specific topics.

                      Back to my original post, it seems to be a problem with Opera. Time indication starts "An hour ago" and also the edit function is not available. Then again, Opera has never really been supported by ElReg's site. Maybe another reason why I'm writing this comment twice - the first attempt just disappeared.

                      1. Anonymous Coward
                        Anonymous Coward

                        Re: Re: Comments' time indication

                        We semi-support Opera ... typically what happens is that Opera releases a new version: it breaks something on our site. If it is easy to fix, we will fix it.

          2. BlueGreen

            Re: Comments' time indication

            this "in the last few minutes" business is presumably driven by jscript. I don't use js. It would be nice if the site recognised that and just put a plain, nothing-clever timestamp on.

  76. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Enable edit of anonymous/named status of forum post

    Would it be possible to make the anon flag of a post editable as well (for the 10 minute edit status)? At the moment, the post itself can be edited for 10 minutes, but not its anon status, which means a post withdrawal and re-submit to correct that..

  77. as2003

    Embeded Flash YouTube

    Not really a bug, but I don't have Flash installed which means none of the embeded youtube videos work because you're using the flash player.

    I wouldn't mention it, except for the fact that I know you could use an HTML5 player.

    For example, in the recent article on the PiPhone [1], I just see a big grey "plugin missing" box, but if I navigate to the source article [2] (where they are using the HTML5 player), it plays perfectly well.

    [1] (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/28/chap_builds_mobe_based_on_raspberry_pi/)

    [2] (http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone/)

    Also, If I remember correctly, you're using some weird overlay which obscures the 'youtube' logo bottom right, thus making it impossible to click through to the video's page on youtube.

    1. Matt@ElReg

      Re: Embeded Flash YouTube

      Hi as2003

      Thanks for the heads-up on this.

      We think we've fixed the problem now if you'd care to take another look.

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/28/chap_builds_mobe_based_on_raspberry_pi/

      Cheers

      1. as2003

        Re: Embeded Flash YouTube

        I missed your response, but I didn't miss a whole bunch of videos suddenly being visible in recent articles. Thanks!

        Incidentally, I'm still being asked to install Adobe Flash Player on every page, but I believe that is due to the current set of adverts.

  78. BlueGreen

    The Register uses cookies. Find out more. Close

    I'm all in favour of laws when they make sense, so how about you give the finger to this stupid legal cookie warning requirement.

    In the unlikely event you get taken to court, you'd have a whole lot of competent tech guys who'd stand up for you. Thoughts?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The Register uses cookies. Find out more. Close

      We would put our heads above the parapet on an important point of principle or to defend ourselves and/ or a source against a vexatious libel suit. Otherwise, we take the the view with law that it is more important not to lose than to win Lawsuits soak up management time and money. And sometimes they add a great deal of stress.

      So the answer is no - we will observe the law, however stupid we think it is.

      1. Vic

        Re: The Register uses cookies. Find out more. Close

        > Lawsuits soak up management time

        So they're not *all* bad, then? :-)

        Vic.

  79. mr_souter_Working

    Problem with IE and el Reg

    for the last few days (probably all week) - whenever accessing the register from IE10 or 11 (work and home - 3 different computers) - one of the CPU cores is maxed out, and IE hangs - it doesn't happen on all parts of the site - or all the time - but it is regular enough to become a real annoyance - i cannot change to any other site, i need to crash out of IE completely to proceed.

    Chrome doesn't seem to have any issues - but i have noticed the same problem on 2 laptops and a desktop - all after accessing the register.

  80. Edwin

    WinPho app (red-faced vulture bug)

    I told myself I wouldn't be a pedant, but when I saw it today, I couldn't help it anymore:

    If the WinPhone app is unable to load an article it informs me that it's unable to 'retreive' the content.

    The fact that it throws up an error message from time to time is one thing, but could you please, please, please fix the typo? "i" before "e" and all that.

    Much obliged.

  81. as2003

    Something very strange going on in this article:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/25/schmidt_hits_the_fanbois_samsung_had_your_shiny_new_toys_years_ago/

    Looks like an </object> tag is missing.

    And while I'm here, can I ask what the justification for the Register overlay on youtube videos is? It's mildly irritating that I can't close adverts and popups in the videos, and the link to the video's page on youtube is not working.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not our overlay

      This is a Bloomberg video and hence its overlay and its ad.

      PS I think the video tag was fixed a while ago.

  82. as2003

    > Not our overlay

    > This is a Bloomberg video

    Sorry, yes, I was actually referring to the youtube videos that appear in other articles.

    > I think the video tag was fixed a while ago.

    In the article I mentioned? Curiously it still appears broken to me in Chromium 37.0 (in both Ubuntu 14.04 and Windows 7)

  83. IHateWearingATie

    buggy Android app

    The Android app on a Samsung galaxy s4 (Android 4.4.2 currently) had two very annoying bugs.

    It fails opening stories that have any embedded video - the whole article, not just the video itself. It gives a page not loaded error in the frame where the text should be

    Second, it randomly fails to load the comments page for some articles- can't see any pattern to it, probably 25 % of the time. It gives a connectivity error as though there is no Internet access, but it happens on wifi as well as on cellular data and when I switch to the browser I have no problem getting to the article on the Web site.

    I barely use the Android app any more as it is so buggy. Sorry!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: buggy Android app

      Ok we have not updated this app - and OS changes have made it pretty bad. We do plan to update this app though - will keep you posted when we have news to share.

  84. jake Silver badge

    Just a note.

    I'm on "the naughty step", for whatever reason[1].

    When I edit a comment, instead of "Submitted and awaiting moderation ..." with an underlying "withdraw", all I see is the "withdraw".

    [1] ElReg's site, ElReg's rules. I'm cool with that.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Test ( was: Re: Just a note.)

      This is just a test.

      And now edited.

      Second edit. Same problem.

  85. Chris Evans

    Older Stories missing four days

    The front page's oldest story is 'Five days old' 24 Dec 2014 at 11:13,

    Clicking on 'Older Stories' and the latest story is: NINE days old 20 Dec 2014 at 01:33

    All the news stories between them don't seem to listed:-(

    n.b.The new policy of having things listed as X days old rather than giving a posted date/time is a real pain. Many people will know I last read thereg on say 23rd/24th at 4p.m.

  86. Glenturret Single Malt

    Daily newsletter

    There was no content in today's newsletter (Monday 5th January) as received by Thunderbird and BT Yahoo Mail. However, the version seen using Outlook was complete.

  87. Daggerchild Silver badge

    Down the back of the sofa

    Post a comment. Oops. Edit comment. Wait for premod approval. Approved. Post goes down the back of the sofa.

    Confirmed by sofafication of duplicate of this post.

    (and while I'm here, I doubt rendered pages should be saying "window.top.$(function() { window.top.$('#advertise-bg').css('position', 'fixed'); });" at the bottom, but that may be my odd browser)

  88. Daggerchild Silver badge

    Down the back of the sofa.

    Post a comment. Oops. Edit comment. Wait for premod approval. Approved. Post goes down the back of the sofa.

    If you can't see this, it's true. If you can see this, it's not, but I have at least one confirmed Scrodinger's comment between worlds atm.

  89. Vimes

    Are different adverts allowed to load different scripts?

    I only ask because some of the ads - most notably the O2 one that has been appearing recently - that appear in the page background don't seem to move unless you might click on the page, at which point the position of the advert is updated.

    Previously some adverts stuttered about in terms of position as I scrolled which suggests to me that position was being controlled via JavaScript rather than by CSS. Other page background adverts - the ones that do seem to be controlled via CSS - seem to be unaffected and the position doesn't seem to move at all (or rather still get displayed no matter how much I scroll).

  90. Vimes

    Problem with this sites CSS?

    On a number of occasions over the last few days the font used is Times New Roman (or something that looks very much like it). It seems to happen sporadically too. I don't think it's my connection as this has happened now on my work PC, my home PC and even my phone.

    1. Vimes

      Re: Problem with this sites CSS?

      It seems to happen mostly with comments on articles in 'the channel' section of this site. Not sure if this helps.

      It also happens in both Chrome and Metro IE.

      1. Marco Fontani

        Re: Problem with this sites CSS?

        Belated reply, but the site's fonts on Channel subdomains was fixed a few weeks ago

  91. Anon

    El Reg pages don't scroll from the keyboard any more...

    ... because the login is auto-focused.

    Please take away the auto-focus: I am sure it is much more common to go to a page and use the space bar or arrow keys to look around the page than it is to want to log in.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: El Reg pages don't scroll from the keyboard any more...

      It was a bug, kinda bad UI, and was fixed yesterday so today it's become an imaginary problem.

      Drew

      P.S. Thanks for the report.

  92. What What?

    Site constantly refreshig

    Seem to be having an issue on most of the pages - they're constantly refreshing. looks like it's the last link under spotlight that tries to reload every few seconds. happening under Firefox and IE.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Site constantly refreshig

      Bug?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Site constantly refreshig

      Forward to tech for perusal

      1. What What?

        Re: Site constantly refreshig

        Thanks Drew,

        the Reg is the only site affected, so i don't think it's at my end :)

    3. Matt@ElReg

      Re: Site constantly refreshig

      Hi What What?

      We're not sure what's going on here; but suspect it might be a bad ad. Could you let us know browser details and where you are in the world to webmaaster@theregster.co.uk and we'll dig deeper.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. What What?

        Re: Site constantly refreshig

        Hi Matt,

        Sorry for delay :). I'm based in Dublin, RoI.

        Using Windows 8.1, IE 11.0.9600.17801, and Firefox 38.0.5

  93. wheelbearing

    Not really a bug...

    A few days ago I noticed that Flagfox, a Firefox add-on that purports to show the physical location of servers (or at least IP addresses), was showing that El Reg had moved to Costa Rica - was this just a glitch or have I been suffering from a touch of silver hat syndrome?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not really a bug...

      No we haven't moved to Costa Rica - our servers are based in Portsmouth. However, the CDN we use - Cloudflare - has data centres everywhere, including Costa Rica, I believe.

  94. ChrisBedford

    The subject line of El Reg's daily email

    Every now and again, the header of my daily list of links will be chopped short at some random position and have a lower case "b" appended.

    Does anyone else see this? Is it Outlook 2007 that's (mis)interpreting something unexpected in the mail? Have I duplicate-posted a bug that's been reported before? (I searched; did not find).

    1. ChrisBedford

      Re: The subject line of El Reg's daily email (er maybe this wasn't the right forum for this?)

      Looks like the 'b' may drop in to replace an em-dash and the rest of the line it belongs to. Interesting, I suppose, if you're into that sort of thing.

  95. Vimes

    It's annoying your site is showing adverts for the Galaxy Note 5, especially when I wouldn't mind being able to get one but they're not being sold in the UK.

  96. Vimes

    There seems to be a bug with the positioning of some of the ads when they're placed above the banner. The ads seem to move downwards as the user scrolls down until it covers the register logo at which point it remains static (so if the user scrolls any further than that the ad doesn't move any further).

    The problem is that the positioning seems to be aligned to the top of both images and doesn't take into account the height of the advert being moved (or at any rate I assume this is what's happening).

    Some of the ads are much taller than most and there have been a few occasions now where the advert - always one for Microsoft for some reason - not only covers the top banner but also the forums links for 'My posts', 'User topics' and the others located in the right hand column.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Marco Fontani

      There seems to be a bug with the positioning of some of the ads when they're placed above the banner

      Thanks for your report; I passed it on to our ad/ops team.

      Looks like this might have been due to specific ads which didn't like to be restricted to the "frame" they should be restricted in. For a little while they managed to escape it, and busted out of it screaming FREEDOM! FREEDOM! before being reigned back into their framed prison where they belong.

      Please do point out to us if something's awry. It'd be helpful if you could provide screenshots, browser, which ad etc... so for these kind of things webmaster@ is a lot better than a post on the forums.

      1. Vimes

        I tweeted one to @theregister. Is that still available or should I send another copy?

    3. chris987

      Having the same issue with the ad banner. To my knowledge I haven't seen an ad that it doesn't happen with, the Microsoft Cloud one is particularly irritating due it's size though.

      I usually have to scroll back to the top of the page to let the ad drop back into place then scroll down to carry on reading.

      I am using Chrome 50.0.2661.89 on Nexus 6 running 6.0.1

  97. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Vimes

      Thus far it's always been one for the Microsoft cloud in my experience.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. Vimes

          ...or Linux?

          Of course this wouldn't be a problem to start with if the people running this site didn't play silly buggers with the adverts by moving them back into view despite being moved off the screen by the user scrolling.

          If the people at the register are so worried about the advert not being seen then why place it above the banner in the first place?

          Getting ads to metaphorically jump up and down & scream 'LOOK AT US, LOOK AT US, LOOK AT US!!!' even more obnoxiously than they did until recently is unlikely to increase the number of clicks. If anything else it's probably more likely to just increase the number of people using ad blockers.

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

            1. Vimes

              I think it's intended, but only to go as far as covering up the top banner before itself being scrolled off the page when the user scrolls even further. Problem is under certain circumstances it covers a lot more by default.

              1. Marco Fontani

                The horizontal ad at the top of the screen is staying in place when I scroll, up to a point, then disappearing.

                This is indeed intended behaviour.

                I think it's intended, but only to go as far as covering up the top banner before itself being scrolled off the page when the user scrolls even further.

                You explained it better than I ;)

                What _isn't_ intended behaviour is an ad "busting out" of that box, which is what caused the issue of the ad "bleeding over" other parts of the page.

                That's something ad-specific, so I passed the info about which ad on to our adops team, and they seem to have sorted it. Thanks for your report!

                1. Vimes

                  If you can't properly control the adverts then perhaps you shouldn't be moving them in the first place?

                  I realise that you're not directly responsible for such badly behaving adverts, but you are nevertheless responsible for how you choose to display them. And the way you have chosen seems to create issues on occasion.

                  1. This post has been deleted by its author

                    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

                      They might have the clout, but probably not the resources/manpower/budget to do this.

                      1. Vimes

                        They do have control however over the layout of their site. They CHOOSE to move around the adverts in this rather buggy way.

                        The problem is still happening by the way, in case anybody from the website is reading this. And it's still the Microsoft Cloud advert that's the cause. Again.

                        1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

                          True. They could do something about the layout.

                          "We could, but..."

                2. Vimes

                  Now the same thing is happening with the large NetApp storage advert appearing at the top of the page.

                  So far both large adverts that have appeared at the top of the page have caused issues. The code to move adverts around is buggy. IMO you need to accept this and either stop doing it or limit the size of the adverts so that this isn't an issue.

  98. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Vimes

      Given all the varieties of issues that can be introduced by the adverts themselves I doubt they'll ever be able to do that properly.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  99. Vimes

    A big Mercedes advert now. Same issue.

    Oh, and with auto-playing video this time too. Nice.

    Why are you going to so much effort to ensure as many people as possible use ad blockers?

  100. This post has been deleted by its author

  101. mr_nil
    Unhappy

    Whitepaper downloads broken on mobile

    Hi there,

    Are you aware that the white paper downloads are broken when you try to download on a mobile device. (Nexus 6p for me)

    The link to a white paper is to a PDF file, but you have an "t & c" agreement screen that blocks the way. This works just fine on desktop browser. On mobile browser it thinks that it's downloading a PDF, so tried to save it rather than open it in the browser and it all goes horribly wrong.

    I like to read these things on my phone on the way to work, so would appreciate it if the download worked properly.

    1. JudeKay (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Whitepaper downloads broken on mobile

      Thanks for letting us know – our tech team is currently addressing the problem.

  102. Stuart Moore

    The mobile site doesn't have a way to get to the article comments. The comments are a big part of the appeal of the site, please link to them from the mobile site

    1. Marco Fontani

      The mobile site doesn't have a way to get to the article comments.

      It does! There's a bubble like link indicating number of comments which, when clicked, brings you to the forum.

      It either says "N comments" or "Post a comment".

  103. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Topic Area Tabs - increase causing problems

    Under the main El Reg banner there are several tabs that group similar topics. There is the Vulture logo for latest news, then Data Centre etc.

    In the last couple of weeks they have been joined by Transformation and Emergent Tech. While these are very worthy topic areas, the increase has caused (on my system at least) Bootnotes to wrap onto a second line. This has the unfortunate effect that when mousing over the Vulture symbol to see the latest news, I can no longer drag straight to those news items because Bootnotes gets in the way and as soon as the cursor travels into Bootnote territory the latest news disappears.

    I can reduce the font/screen size (Ctrl -) to fit the tabs into a single line but that shrinks the whole page leaving unused real estate borders and my poor old eyes can't take it.

    Can you fix the tabs please.

    1. Marco Fontani

      Re: Topic Area Tabs - increase causing problems

      the increase has caused (on my system at least) Bootnotes to wrap onto a second line

      Hi, sorry to hear you're experiencing this issue. Would you be able to share a bit more details about your browser and system, as we can't reproduce the issue with the ones we most commonly use?

      get in touch at webmaster@, thanks!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        Re: Topic Area Tabs - increase causing problems

        Just thought I would let world+dog know that problem solved with help from MF. Turns out it was a default minimum font size in the browser not letting ElReg website do tabs in small enough font to fit into one line. Browser tweak removing minimum font size solved problem. Much thanks.

  104. Vimes

    If you're going to insist on moving the top advert down as the user scrolls down the page, perhaps you could include the links at the top of the page in the part that gets moved? Otherwise the advert ends up covering useful links, including the one for these forums.

    I note after all that you make sure that moving the advert doesn't cover up the main menu bar directly underneath the main logo image on the page (which funnily enough is where the forums link was until recently)

  105. as2003

    I don't know is this is a recent configuration mistake, or it's always been like this, but HTTPS isn't available across the site; even login is posted across an insecure connection.

    No excuse to not be mandating HTTPS in this day and age,

    1. Lennart Sorensen

      Oh but there is an excuse: The ad serving infrastructure is shit and doesn't do https yet. That seems to be the standard excuse for not doing https on sites these days.

  106. Lennart Sorensen

    Front page broken.

    Speaking of bugs: The front page is only showing about 6 stories, with the rest being blank space (some browsers show broken image icons throughout the remaining space, but that's it). Mobile version is fine though.

  107. MarkDemon
    FAIL

    Smartphone app

    Last week the Register app borked itself and stopped downloading updates. Having removed and reinstalled it, it's just completely blank now. Clearing the cache of the few KBs doesn't help.

    Is this just me or has anyone else experienced this?

    Also searching the app store I couldn't obviously find the app - has it been discontinued in favour of the mobile site?

    1. Marco Fontani

      Re: Smartphone app

      Also searching the app store I couldn't obviously find the app - has it been discontinued in favour of the mobile site?

      The apps should've shown a "sticky article" for a couple weeks, saying that the API was getting discontinued at the end of January. All of them have been pulled from the respective app store, and the API has now been discontinued.

      Use the mobile site instead.

  108. TRT Silver badge

    Anti-Ddos and missing images

    On frequent occasions I'm missing images all over the website and I've now got a 5 second block when trying to load anything. What gives?!

    1. Marco Fontani

      Re: Anti-Ddos and missing images

      On frequent occasions I'm missing images all over the website and I've now got a 5 second block when trying to load anything. What gives?!

      Could you please email at webmaster@ with the contents of https://www.theregister.co.uk/cdn-cgi/trace please? Unless you're connecting from a bad reputation IP, that shouldn't happen.

      Might it be you're connecting via tor? In that case, you might want to load at least once https://regmedia.co.uk/ so that Cloudflare can check your browser, and set a cookie which will allow your browser to load everything fine. Of course, if you then go and delete your cookies every time you close the browser, you might have to go through this again…

  109. paulej72

    CSS

    Who messed with the CSS. The font sizes seem to be too big especially on comments. I am using FF 52.0.1 on Win 7. IE 11 looked the same.

  110. Marco Fontani

    Re: Smartphone app

    Who messed with the CSS. The font sizes seem to be too big especially on comments.

    We did.

    The font size for article and comments body was quite a bit too small, and it's been set to ~16px, which is a good legible size for them.

  111. jake Silver badge

    Looks like "The Week In Summary" is being worked on.

    Lotsa white-space in there, guys. Intentional?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Looks like "The Week In Summary" is being worked on.

      unintentional - same bug spotted in search / fixed there.

      thanks for the spot - we'll get to it tomorrow.

  112. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Spurious Blank lines at end of comments

    I've noticed the comments are starting to get spurious blank lines after them.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Spurious Blank lines at end of comments

      I've been looking for this since you posted. I've not seen it.

      What I *have* seen is many more posts than normal without Subjects Titles. Kinda makes it more of a pain than normal to follow a thread in a non-threaded forum. Not sure if this is a bug somewhere (mobile users, maybe?), or just co-inky-dink.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Spurious Blank lines at end of comments

      Please link us to an example or two and we'll have a look.

      1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

        @Drew Re: Spurious Blank lines at end of comments

        Not sure how to link to individual comments, but I'm seeing a couple of comments on this page alone.

        Also, take a look at the first couple of posts on this article https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2017/06/14/uber_waymo_legal_battle_latest/

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: @Drew Spurious Blank lines at end of comments

          I'm still not seeing it on Slackware-stable, bog-standard HP laptop. Not poo-pooing you, just a data point that may or may not be useful to ElReg.

          You can get a copy of the link to any given post/comment by right clicking the "date stamp" in the upper right corner of any post & following your nose.

          1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

            Re: @Drew Spurious Blank lines at end of comments

            If someone at El Reg wants to, they can email me and I can send some screenshots.

            1. Marco Fontani

              Re: @Drew Spurious Blank lines at end of comments

              Could you email us at webmaster@ this domain?

              See https://www.theregister.co.uk/Page/problem.html for the kind of information we'll likely need, i.e. the exact url you're seeing this on, the browser, IP, etc. etc.

              Look forward to hearing from you!

              The Webmaster ;)

  113. This post has been deleted by its author

  114. jezbod

    Website unusable at the moment

    There is something on the site that is grinding my IE11 to a halt and the only common theme is the adverts on the pages. Specifically the NetApp animation, that takes about 3 minutes to load.

    Firefox works perfectly fine since it strips the ads.

    1. Marco Fontani

      Re: Website unusable at the moment

      Specifically the NetApp animation, that takes about 3 minutes to load.

      I've alerted our ad/ops team to this, thanks for your report!

  115. Barry Rueger

    Edit Forum posts

    Am I just thick, or is the claim of a ten minute window to edit posts just a myth.

    I've looked, and fail to find anything that would allow editing.

    Or is that not for users of the mobile site?

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Vimes

        Re: Edit Forum posts

        While we're on the subject is there any chance of increasing the length of the editing window for people that have proven themselves in your eyes to be reasonably responsible? There have been a few occasions where I wanted to make some innocuous changes after the 10 minutes - typos mostly - but have been unable to do so because of this rather arbitrary limit.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Edit Forum posts

          In a sense all limits are arbitrary. What do you think is a reasonable time?

          I think the 10 minutes tidying up window is reasonable compromis between no edit (c.f. Twitter) and perpetual edit (c.f. Facebook).

          I am wary of perpetual edits as readers can misuse to rewrite posts to undermine arguments made by others.

          1. Vic

            Re: Edit Forum posts

            I am wary of perpetual edits as readers can misuse to rewrite posts to undermine arguments made by others.

            The bigger problem, IME, is spammers coming in and making innocuous posts, then editing them a week later when they think no-one's looking...

            Vic.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Edit Forum posts

      Currently it is not enabled on m.thereg - it is a trivial client-side change though. We'll put it on our to do list.

  116. jake Silver badge

    Odd HTML error.

    See the thread starting with this post:

    https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/3241916

    It's self explanatory, so I won't re-invent the wheel beyond saying that I didn't insert the extra HTML at the end of that link, and it wasn't there when I first posted it.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Missed the edit window by a minute ...

      No need to reply to the above, just documenting weirdness.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Odd HTML error.

      Weird

    3. Marco Fontani

      Re: Odd HTML error.

      I've tracked this down. Your original submitted text contained newlines at the end of the href, just before the ending double quote… which in turn later made the auto-paragraphs feature spit out horribly invalid HTML.

      I've "fixed" your original post, and I've made it so that newlines found within those hrefs now constitute an error.

  117. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    An odd bug that just caused me to double-post on the latest Bong thread. Hit post, nothing happened. Went back to thread, nothing showing, hit the browser back button to get to my post, and re-submitted. Still nothing. Then a minute later, two posts. So deleted one, and edited a speeeling mistake in the duplicate, and neither have updated.

    Will this post?

    Edit: Test-edited another post in that thread, and it didn't initially show up. So this is a test to see if it's a thread-specific problem?

    Edit 2: Ye But List seems to work as expected. But that Bong! thread has now deleted both of my duplicate posts. Could just be a minor connection problem, or a mis-setting on that article. I'm on Win 10 with latest Firefox.

    Edit 3: Seems to be working again now. Must be a weird connection issue, so you can probably ignore me.

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

      The posts don't update immediately like they used to.. Some server side caching I suspect, did you reload the page from the server again?

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Yes. I even closed the browser session and re-opened. I know that posts don't immediately turn up in the threads, but they also weren't showing when I clicked on the "my posts" link.

        Then when they did and I hit the edit button, edited and hit post - refreshing that page showed the original message still.

        However it appears to have been a temporary issue, as it hasn't happened since. Bloody computers!

        1. jake Silver badge

          Similar has happened to me occasionally.

          It has always cleared up all by itself. I just figure that I'm posting exactly when someone is making a change (or changes) to the backend code, and carry on.

        2. Jamie Jones Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Fair enough, I suspected you knew that, being one of the original old timers :-) - but always best to eliminate the obvious!

          But typical, eh? computers... never broken when you want then to be! :-) as you say.... bloody computers!

        3. Marco Fontani

          Yes. I even closed the browser session and re-opened. I know that posts don't immediately turn up in the threads, but they also weren't showing when I clicked on the "my posts" link.

          Your request to post… well, a "post" on a forum… is "done" (shows up on the forum, shows up on "my posts", etc) only when it's been completely processed by our backend.

          Until then, it's just a JSON file on a disk, nothing more.

      2. Marco Fontani

        The posts don't update immediately like they used to.. Some server side caching I suspect

        Your "requests" to post a comment, or edit a comment, are placed into a "FIFO queue" along with other things.

        If the queue is not empty, your post may take a little while to show up on the site - depending on how many requests there are before yours, their type, and how long they take to be processed.

        As the message shown after your post has been sent says, "be patient".

        On top of that, if we're making sweeping changes to our backends, we may temporarily stop the processing of new forum posts. You're still able to post, and your posts will be recorded - they'll just not appear on the site until maintenance is complete.

  118. jake Silver badge

    Do you guys want to know about "Error 524"?

    Seeing it again at 0145 this early AM, California time.

    The only reason I post here instead of email is because others might be wondering if all y'all need/want folks to report this.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Do you guys want to know about "Error 524"?

      Sure.

  119. This post has been deleted by its author

  120. GrumpenKraut

    One of my comments vanished from the "My posts" list.

    This one: https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/4/2018/04/06/on_call/#c_3477849 does not show anymore on said list. This may have happened in the last two weeks.

    A suggestion while at it: I got a comment rejected (sniffle!) and it would be interesting to see the votes with that (depressing in this case: it was apparently downvoted to hell because everybody got it wrong initially).

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: One of my comments vanished from the "My posts" list.

      I can see it, third post down on page 2 of your posting history (at the moment). Not sure what this means, if anything.

      1. GrumpenKraut
        Pint

        Re: One of my comments vanished from the "My posts" list.

        Indeed! I assumed posts on one article were consecutive on the list.

        Thanks tons! ---->

  121. jake Silver badge

    Question.

    I have "Sort Comments By" set to "newest" ... When I go to "Forums" >> "MyTopics" >> "Ye Bug List" it takes me to page 7 of the comments, which date to 2012. To get to the actual newest posts I have to click on page 1, which seems like a wasted step. (Happens to everything under MyTopics; I just picked this thread as an example.) Is this a bug or a feature?

    I asked this question once before, years ago, but never got an answer.

This topic is closed for new posts.