"Preview Post" button shows correct preview but completely erases the message!?!?!

[snowhiker]

"Preview Post" button shows correct preview but completely erases the message!?!?!

Goofy problem that started happening for me, but not for every post.

"Preview Post" button shows correct preview but completely erases the message!?!?!

1) I enter text.
2) Click "Preview Post."
3) Correct preview is displayed but all my entered text has been erased from box?!?

Cookies/scrips allowed. Firefox 33.1.1.

Strange.

 

[Handruin]

Goofy problem that started happening for me, but not for every post.

"Preview Post" button shows correct preview but completely erases the message!?!?!

1) I enter text.
2) Click "Preview Post."
3) Correct preview is displayed but all my entered text has been erased from box?!?

Cookies/scrips allowed. Firefox 33.1.1.

Strange.

I tried the exact same using Firefox 33.1.1 and I'm not able to reproduce this. What are all the extensions you have running?

 

[snowhiker]

I tried the exact same using Firefox 33.1.1 and I'm not able to reproduce this. What are all the extensions you have running?

The preview displayed fine for me just now, so hopefully it was some weird abnormality that won't happen again.

I have:

AB+ 2.6.6
Downloadhelper 4.9.24
Ghostery 5.4.1
NoScript 2.6.9.5
WOT 20131118

installed.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm seeing this as well, and am also unable to edit my post as the box is simply blank.
(Win 7, IE 11)

 

[snowhiker]

Problem with large multi-quote posts

Update. This is happening again.

But I think it's a problem with the "multi-quote" function and not simply the preview post function. I multi-quoted three large, multi-line posts in the DSLR thread and then the preview post button wiped out all the quoted text in the reply edit box. I then multi-quoted five very short one-line messages and there was no problem.

Perhaps there is some setting that sets the max size/number of characters of a multi-quote and if it's above that number it just wipes everything out?

EDIT:
I closed Firefox and deleted ALL cookies for this site. Then restarted Firefox and tried again. But.....

I can't reply w/quote on Lunar's last message in the DSLR thread. I click reply w/quote and the small reply box with quoted text comes up OK. I click advanced and the larger text box opens up but all the quoted text is gone? I tried deleting large portions of the message before I clicked advanced and it still wipes it out?

ARRRRRRGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Handruin]

Thanks for the feedback and sorry for the frustration this is causing you. I'll play around with multi-quote in the photo thread to see if I can reproduce the same behavior. Do you recall which specific post it was so I can try to reproduce it on my end? I'm assuming it was one of the large ones. I'll look and see if there is a character size limit for the multi-quote. That's a good theory; thanks for the idea.

 

[LunarMist]

My problems were with the DSLR thread. http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php/6694-dSLR-thread?p=184191&viewfull=1#post184191
The post was not terribly long, but most of mine are shorter.

 

[snowhiker]

My problems were with the DSLR thread. http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php/6694-dSLR-thread?p=184191&viewfull=1#post184191
The post was not terribly long, but most of mine are shorter.

Yeah it was that post. Just tried it again. "Reply with Quote", clicked "go advanced" and all quoted text is gone.

Edit: After I clicked "go advanced" all the text in the larger edit box is gone but the preview above the large text entry box still has the quoted text. I copy and pasted that text into the edit box and clicked "preview". Preview is fine, but again the edit box is empty.

Weird.

 

[Handruin]

ok, thanks for the additional info. I'll see if I can figure out what's causing this weirdness.

 

[LunarMist]

It's happening again to me with this post.
http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php/10449-Dying-Computer?p=184533#post184533

 

[snowhiker]

It's happening again to me with this post.
http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php/10449-Dying-Computer?p=184533#post184533

WTH. I just tested it myself and like Lunar I'm getting the same problem. Reply with quote, click go advanced, and all the text in edit box is gone. The original message is very short so there goes my theory regarding "long" posts not getting quoted properly due to size. Perhaps there is some "hidden" formatting/html codes in original that's causing the deletion of the quoted text.

Weird.

 

[timwhit]

Could you just copy it and then paste after clicking advanced?

 

[LunarMist]

There was nothing to copy.

 

[snowhiker]

Could you just copy it and then paste after clicking advanced?

Yes I could copy/paste text. But if I copy/paste, then edit/add text or just click preview again, the edit box is once again emptied.

Problem seems to be (at least in my case) that once a post has its text wiped out by clicking preview, every time from then on (that post only) if you click preview it wipes out the text. On a Looooooooooooong post I may click preview 30+ times as I'm typing/editing so copy/pasting all the time would be a PITA.

Preview is working fine with this post.
Click preview, edit box has text. Add text.
Click preview, edit box has text. Add text.
Click preview, edit box has text. Add text.
Click preview, edit box has text. Add text.
No problems.

Just for some random reason on some posts, no matter the length, preview deletes all text in edit box. I just re-tested the post Lunar linked to and even several hours later if I click preview the text in edit box is wiped out. So very unlikely it's a random server glitch.

 

[snowhiker]

Edit. Sigh, seems post went through even with error and double posted.

LMAO. After clicking preview 50+ times on above post to test things out, add/change text, re-work sentences, etc I get an Internal Server Error after I click post.

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator at webmaster@storageforum.net to inform them of the time this error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.


.....want I meant to post before server hiccup.

Could you just copy it and then paste after clicking advanced?

Yes I could copy/paste text. But if I copy/paste, then edit/add text or just click preview again, the edit box is once again emptied.

Problem seems to be (at least in my case) that once a post has its text wiped out by clicking preview, every time from then on (that post only) if you click preview it wipes out the text. On a Looooooooooooong post I may click preview 30+ times as I'm typing/editing so copy/pasting all the time would be a PITA.

Preview is working fine with this post.
Click preview, edit box has text. Add text.
Click preview, edit box has text. Add text.
Click preview, edit box has text. Add text.
Click preview, edit box has text. Add text.
No problems.

Just for some random reason on some posts, no matter the length, preview deletes all text in edit box. I just re-tested the post Lunar linked to and even several hours later if I click preview the text in edit box is wiped out. So very unlikely it's a random server glitch.

 

[Handruin]

I apologize for not getting to this sooner. I've had some family stuff to attend to. I'm back now and I'll look into this with more priority. I am able to see the issue you've describe using the quote feature on the same post that Lunar and you experienced the issue. I'll see if I can figure out why this is happening. Not only am I seeing the text disappear when quoting, but also if I try to edit the posts as admin. What I'm seeing in that post is I can edit and quote any post before the post from Lunar here. I'm wondering if the issue is related to the symbol used to represent degrees or the ":doh:" reference.

Here is the post Lunar made that I'm posting here as a reference and test:

":doh: I ran some goofy benchmark and the GPU reached 59°C max. The 200mm side fan is blowing right on the passive heatsink, so that must be helping somewhat."

What I'm seeing is, if I remove the "°" symbol, I can preview this post. If I leave it in, I cannot preview the post...the text is missing. You can reproduce this bug yourself by copy and pasting the symbol and replying with and without it.

Basically Lunar broke the quote and preview feature. ;-) Now I'll have to figure out why the code doesn't handle that symbol and likely others.

 

[Handruin]

I apologize for not getting to this sooner. I've had some family stuff to attend to. I'm back now and I'll look into this with more priority. I am able to see the issue you've describe using the quote feature on the same post that Lunar and you experienced the issue. I'll see if I can figure out why this is happening. Not only am I seeing the text disappear when quoting, but also if I try to edit the posts as admin. What I'm seeing in that post is I can edit and quote any post before the post from Lunar here. I'm wondering if the issue is related to the symbol used to represent degrees or the ":doh:" reference.

Here is the post Lunar made that I'm posting here as a reference and test:

":doh: I ran some goofy benchmark and the GPU reached 59°C max. The 200mm side fan is blowing right on the passive heatsink, so that must be helping somewhat."

What I'm seeing is, if I remove the "°" symbol, I can preview this post. If I leave it in, I cannot preview the post...the text is missing. You can reproduce this bug yourself by copy and pasting the symbol and replying with and without it.

Basically Lunar broke the quote and preview feature. ;-) Now I'll have to figure out why the code doesn't handle that symbol and likely others.

What's strange is I'm able to initially quote this post (as seen above) but once I hit the "Go Advanced" button, the text will be missing...and it is.

 

[Handruin]

Testing a post with the generated alt+248 degree symbol (alt+shift+8 on mac) to make sure it's not a copy & paste issue.

°

Confirmed it also breaks VB preview.

 

[LunarMist]

Thanks for looking into this. However, I always use 176 for the degree symbol. I'm getting ø with 248.
I use the 176 (°), 177 (±), 181 (µ), and 174 (®) quite frequently for work as they function in most Windows fonts and across applications.

 

[Handruin]

Thanks for looking into this. However, I always use 176 for the degree symbol. I'm getting ø with 248.
I use the 176 (°), 177 (±), 181 (µ), and 174 (®) quite frequently for work as they function in most Windows fonts and across applications.

My bad. I looked up what the alt key reference was and took the wrong one. None the less thanks for pointing out the correct code. There's nothing wrong with you using them, the forum should not break when they're used but it does.

 

[snowhiker]

I apologize for not getting to this sooner. I've had some family stuff to attend to. I'm back now and I'll look into this with more priority. I am able to see the issue you've describe using the quote feature on the same post that Lunar and you experienced the issue.

No need to apologize. You are doing a bang-up job. With you actually seeing the issue at least I know that I'm not going insane. LOL.

Thanks for looking into this minor glitch.

 

[snowhiker]

I had this pop up again early this A.M. in DSLR thread. It's been two months since I had this issues so was, WTH when it happened again. LOL. I wonder if my re-sizing/enlarging the text-entry box caused the issue. Hard to replicate error so maybe just an actual glitch or issue on my end.

I've lost so many messages across many messages boards that if I'm working on a complicated post I just copy+paste to a notepad doc in case things crap out. So nothing was lost.

 

[Handruin]

I've also gotten in the habit of doing a copy & paste every so often on larger posts because I too, have been burned by various forum software while trying to preview, post, or even a browser crash. Vbulletin is supposed to save your post every few seconds in case of this happening but I've not had a successful restore of a post.

 

[snowhiker]

Argh!!!!

/facepalm

Issue came up again with this post.

Going to delete cookies and reboot to see if it helps.

EDIT: Deleting cookies didn't see to work. Click link above, then "Reply with Quote", then click "Go Advanced" and edit box is empty? Strange. Maybe it's just me.

 

[snowhiker]

I haven't had this error in a few months but it happened twice in the last few days.

 

[LunarMist]

I haven't had this error in a few months but it happened twice in the last few days.

Is it the degree or another symbol again? I bet you can't quote this post.
°µ±® etc.

 

[LunarMist]

I can't edit the post either. LOL

 

[Stereodude]

Is it the degree or another symbol again? I bet you can't quote this post.
°µ±® etc.

You were saying?

 

[Stereodude]

FWIW, you can quote it with the quick reply, but not in the full reply section, and the post can't be edited.

 

[snowhiker]

FWIW, you can quote it with the quick reply, but not in the full reply section, and the post can't be edited.

This.

You can "quick reply" and things work, but if you "go advanced" the message edit box is empty.

Also Lunar my messages didn't have any "special" characters in them and were actually short messages, not long multi-paragraph posts. Seems random and I can't duplicate the error so it's frustrating.

 

[snowhiker]

Somewhat related to this thread: I got a: "Fatal Error: Invalid URL." (on a completely white screen with just those words) when I clicked the "go advanced" button. Hit the back button the tried again and it was OK. Maybe a Firefox v41.0.1 caused/related error?

I guess I just have bad luck.

What's that ole computer hacker/programmer saying about "no matter how idiot-proof you create you input editor, some user will figure out how to defeat it."

Raises hand. I'm that idiot.

 

[CougTek]

Unlike you, I have to say that the site is pretty reliable for me. I haven't experience many annoyances. It's been quite a while since I've smashed something because of storageforum.net.

I've used the site under a wide variety of OS and browsers too. Inside a VM and on physical machines. In all flavors of Windows since Vista and Server 2008. In too many Linux distro to count. In GhostBSD. Not often does the site eat my posts.

 

[Handruin]

Somewhat related to this thread: I got a: "Fatal Error: Invalid URL." (on a completely white screen with just those words) when I clicked the "go advanced" button. Hit the back button the tried again and it was OK. Maybe a Firefox v41.0.1 caused/related error?

I guess I just have bad luck.

What's that ole computer hacker/programmer saying about "no matter how idiot-proof you create you input editor, some user will figure out how to defeat it."

Raises hand. I'm that idiot.

This one is new to me and I'll have to look through the logs around the time it happened to understand what may have caused the error.

Aside from that specific issue, I believe I've fixed the issue this specific post was tracking. We should no longer have the edit box be empty when quoting posts with special characters. The issue was due to a change in newer PHP version in how it defaulted the character set back to UTF8 if one was not specified when calling the function "htmlspecialchars()". This resulted in an empty string being returned which is why the preview window would be empty when special characters were quoted.

I've put in a change as outlined in this post here and it seems to have solved the original issue as far as I've tested. I'm quoting the post in case the link goes dead in the future.

The fix referred to is:

Looking at the CKEditor site, it appears that a change in the default encoding of htmlspecialchars() (from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8) causes the editor to throw a blank box in some instances. Peachy.

I fixed it on my board by the following change to /vb/ckeditor.php

Line 507:
htmlspecialchars($value)

Changed to

htmlspecialchars($value, ENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401, "ISO-8859-1")


Superfeeed, was there an upgrade to PHP 5.4 at about the same time this issue was first reported?

Edit: I just tried to edit this post, first as is (no issues - the text was displayed in the edit box), and then after entering some special characters (issue - the edit box was blank). This is the problem. Until it's resolved, folks should try removing any special characters first, or use the Copy/Paste techniques previously described.

 

[snowhiker]

MUCH THANKS for all the work you put in to try and solve this problem that seems to effect mostly me. I've had this problem without having any special characters in the text but I hope it helps nonetheless. It still might be partially caused on my end by some interference between my browser and plugins/extensions.

Again thanks for the work needed to tackle this issue.

 

[Handruin]

MUCH THANKS for all the work you put in to try and solve this problem that seems to effect mostly me. I've had this problem without having any special characters in the text but I hope it helps nonetheless. It still might be partially caused on my end by some interference between my browser and plugins/extensions.

Again thanks for the work needed to tackle this issue.

No problem, sorry it took me so long to get this done. Let me know if you continue to notice the issue happening. I did some basic spot checks on the issue but nothing extensive.