Site going black when I try to edit a post

[anon(9072051)]

For the past 2 days, whenever I try to type into the WYSIWYG text editor in any forum, my browser window goes completely black, and I have to leave the page because the page will not redraw. I'm using an old rinkydink Dell PC running XP, and the browser is Firefox with the NoScript extension blocking ads/pop-ups and forcing me to give permission to any .com and .net URLs other than androidcentral.com.

Even if I temporarily "allow all" for every page, the window almost immediately goes black as soon as I try to use the text editor.

Once when a forum page redrew, I saw a four or five-line patch of code or comment that starts off

!doctype html> html> head> /head> body leftMargin "0"...

and ends with some hellaciously long doubleclick.net URL that looks like a string of keyboard projectile vomit, if that means anything.

I'm just trying to find out if something has changed on your site (like an update to the text editor), or if I'm having problems because of some change to FF or, maybe more likely, XP support.

 

[Roderick Roy]

I've been having exactly the same problem when trying to start a thread here on Android Central Forum. I could put the heading in OK but as soon as I started typing in the main box it all goes black and stays like that.

I got round it by typing question up in Word then copying, pasting and clicking send very quickly before it goes black. Took about 12 attempts but worked in the end. I'm also using Firefox and an older OS (the terrible Vista). Could it be an update not supported by XP or Vista?

 

[anon(9072051)]

Good to know I'm not alone in this. Even with copying and pasting from Notepad, it took 40 minutes to get this thread started.

 

[Trees]

I have seen some pop up adds on the Mobile Nations sites take over focus. Since the large ad with the black background appears at the page top, it looks like the entire page is black. Have to scroll up to find the add, close it, and then the main page regains focus. Doesn't sound like that's the problem experienced in this thread, but there is a similar symptom.

 

[James Falconer]

Could definitely be an XP or Vista issue.

@quelquehomme - would you be able to paste a screenshot of the page you see with the : !doctype html> html> head> /head> body leftMargin "0"... code?

 

[anon(9072051)]

Thanks for the response. After using the AC site this weekend on my WIN 10 PC at home with no problems, I'm ready to agree that this black screen deal is tied to browsers dumping support for XP and Vista.

The little soulpatch o' code that I came across isn't exclusive to your site. No idea now which other site it appeared on, but it's got to be a browser (Firefox, in this case) issue. (I'm guessing it's code for some banner ad or pop-up ad.) Here's the image anyway (fingers crossed):

 

[Nick_1020]

I've been getting this too.

FF v44.0.2 on Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

 

[anon(9072051)]

FF v44.0.2 on Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

You probably need to update Firefox. Latest version # is 46, I think, and since no one's dropping support for Win 7, you don't need to wait for an automatic update.

 

[James Falconer]

Looks like that 5 lines of code you see are all within an ad unit. So that's something I can alert our ad partner to.

My bigger concern is the screen going black on you... can you give me the steps along with full details on OS/browser. Will write this up and see if we can reproduce.

 

[anon(9072051)]

This is an XP machine (an 8-year-old Dell Vostro 400) on Service Pack 3. The browser is Firefox 45.2, which may be the latest version that will run on XP. In fact, it looks like FF just updated to 45.2 on April 12th, so it may be that the update didn't install properly or that I need to rollback to 45.1 for awhile. I'll look into that.

The steps themselves are hardly controversial:

Click on Post New Thread.

Type a title into the Title field (as opposed to copy n paste), and the screen goes black, usually as soon as I leave that field (as in just moving my cursor down to the Body field without clicking there to place a blinking cursor).

OR

Open any ongoing thread.

Start typing into the Quick Reply text field at the bottom of the page.
[This one is far more erratic. I've actually managed to type a full line of text sometimes, stopping after each period to see what might happen, before seeing the screen go black (nearly a full minute of typing!). Other times the screen flips to black quickly, like within 15 seconds after I start typing.]

I can usually right-click inside the browser after the page goes black and reload the page, and if the page does reload, I can "restore auto-saved content." Unfortunately, the page is no more stable after the reload, and the screen will go black again within a minute's time if I type anything.

Best of all, though, I can stare at one of these reloaded pages indefinitely, but if I so much as click in the Quick Reply text field, the screen immediately goes black. That one's my favorite.

Update: It turns out I don't need to click in the text field to make the screen go black. Evidently just clicking anywhere on the page, even "dead" areas of nothing but white, can sometimes make the screen go black.

Good luck trying to reproduce.

 

[anon(9072051)]

One more bit of information that may be related to your ad partners.

I forgot to mention that I have added a No Script extension to Firefox, and I deny permission to most every script that is not specific to an actual Android Central page. There are options in the NoScript flyout menu to either "Allow all this page" or "Temporarily allow all this page."

The strange thing is that if I select the temporary option, then the total number of scripts on any given page continually increases each time I select the temporary option. I started out with the Options bar indicating that NS was allowing 19 of 21 scripts, and after 5 clicks on "Temporarily allow all this page," it's up to 44 of 50.

I have no idea if that's unusual or not, but it would be useful to know if the other people getting the black screen treatment also have No Script installed on FF and have it set to deny permissions.


P.S. I had to make this post in Chrome because the same page would not stop flipping to black each time I clicked on the page. FF 45.2 + NoScript may be a toxic combination. I'm currently not experiencing any issues with Chrome.