Any changes to the forum config yesterday?

[jrebman]

For some reason the identification of tables that enclose individual replies within a thread are gone again.  This worked fine yesterday afternoon, the computer was off, and when I turned it back on this morning, no tables.  I rebooted several times, cleared cache, cookies, etc. and no change -- still no tables.

Please understand that this makes a huge difference as to whether this forum is easy to use or hardly usable.

At least with the AC format, there are headings to separate responses, but even those are not showing here.

Thanks, and sorry to continue to be a pain about this,

Jim

 

[dbishopbliss]

I haven't touched anything... I noticed the table structure changes depending whether you are logged in or not.  I wonder if that could be it.

 

[jrebman]

David,

No, I'm always logged on automatically.  But just as an experiment, I logged out, cleared everything, shutdown the computer, brought it all back up, went to the site, re-logged in and still no tables.

This is just really weird because I'm not changing anything on my end either.

Well, maybe the next full moon will bring the tables back.

-- Jim

 

[booangler]

Jim,

What browser are using?

Alan

 

[jrebman]

Alan,  Firefox 3.0.14.  The tables show with IE 7, but for a lot of reasons, mostly having to do with my screen reader, I only use IE when a site just won't work at all with FF.  Really the only site like that is the new partsconnexion site.

-- Jim

 

[Grainger49]

Jim,

I'm using 3.0.15.  I have no troubles.  But I don't see many tables.  Where are they?

 

[booangler]

Jim,

I have been using FF 3.5 or Google Chrome and do not have many problems with either. I am not a fan of IE, period, end of story. I haven't had any of the recent problems reported by others and I am on this site a lot, as shown by the stats page. If for some reason you can not update to FF 3.5.3, try Chrome.

Alan

 

[jrebman]

Alan and Grainger,

Thanks for the suggestions, but the issue here is that this is a communication issue between my screen reader -- the software that lets me as a blind person, use my computer -- and the browsers.  These kinds of table structures would not normally be seen by most people not using a screen reader, but you will see them in the page source html code.

Alan, I believe this is 3.5 I'm using, at least that's what I downloaded.  Chrome is totally inaccessible with a screen reader.  Google is aware of the problem, whether they'll do anything about it remains to be seen.

-- Jim

 

[Doc B]

Hi Jim,

I just tried the command "optimize tables" in the forum maintenance menu. Did that help at all?

 

[jrebman]

Doc,

Not that I can see.  I'm convinced that this is just some weirdness between FF and my screen reader.  I'm going to ask a couple of the screen reader developers to take a look and see if there is anything that they can see.

I'm also going to check out my settings on my laptop in the bedroom because although it is running the same versions of FF and the screen reader, it may be configured slightly differently and thus may be setting the cookie to the mobile version of the site.  That's the only possibility I can come up with right now.

Thanks for trying though,

Jim

 

[Doc B]

Connecting to the Mobile version was going to be my next suggestion. Not sure how that is initiated, as it just comes up automatically on my phone when I go to the forum, and I see the same URL as the non-mobile version. So I would guess you are right, it has to do with cookies, maybe they got cleared. I googled around a bit for any info about screen readers and Small Machines Forum software, but so far I haven't found any useful info. Which screen reader are you using?

 

[jrebman]

I'm using Window-Eyes -- the current shipping version 7.11.  I'm on the beta test team for this software so I always have access to the latest stuff, but there have been no betas since 7.11 went live or I'd immediately suspect that and just roll back to confirm.

It could be something as simple as my laptop defaulting to not loading images that triggers the mobile version.  I usually leave them off as that is a much slower machine than my work computer, which I'm on now.

I'm a moderator on AC which also uses SMF, and for the most part, I've not had any problems except one instance of this disappearing table thing, and that was definitely a problem with an older version of FF and a beta of Window-Eyes pre 7.11.

-- Jim

 

[Doc B]

I'm just casting about for ideas with this one, but it seems like Firefox has been sending out a lot of updates lately. I think I just got the latest one a few days ago.

 

[jrebman]

That's very true, and why I typically keep auto updates off.  Maybe I forgot to do that on my laptop though.

-- Jim

 

[jrebman]

Doc and David,

Think I found the problem.  Seems to be a Java issue.  I updated Java yesterday for a completely unrelated project and the next time I visited the forum the tables were back to being correctly identified.

I'll verify this later when I update Java on my laptop too.

-- Jim