Forum Bug Reports and Feature Requests

You could load these pages with Opera and tell it to switch off animations etc.

The problem has gone away. Did you flip any switches?
I first encountered it a few months ago in the RPGcodex thread so it wasn't something random that came up yesterday.

Originally Posted by Gorath
You could load these pages with Opera and tell it to switch off animations etc.

Switching browser would honestly be harder than switching OS at this point.

I just flipped a switch, yeah. The "animated GIF" problem should be fixed now for IE users.

The actual problem was that IE kept firing the browser's "onload" event for every single frame of the GIF (duh). This event is used in relation to the image viewer we use (HighSlide JS). To make the viewer only show up on too large images that would otherwise destroy the layout, there is code in place to delete a tag outside the image on said "onload" event.

So essentially, in IE the animated GIF would, frame by frame, eat itself out of the page by deleting all surrounding tags layer by layer until it was the only thing left on the page, after which it would freeze the page by finally consuming itself. Think of a snake eating its own tail.

(Found a fix here: http://webbugtrack.blogspot.de/2007/…for-every.html)

Interesting, how/why could Firefox be affected by this though?

We're using Google Chrome here at work and I still occasionally have the exploding gifs. I have far more trouble when I'm on IE at home, but the problem isn't completely unique to IE. I would assume that Firefox handles the animated gifs much like Chrome- better, but still not perfect. I guess "flipping the switch" for IE also corrects the rare stack of circumstances that cause other browsers to puke, but that's getting to a depth where I have to call in smarter folk than me.

It might just be easier to blame Arhu for the whole lot.

If such problems are spread across so vastly different rendering engines I'd think standards and specification (or lack of them) or implementation would be to blame rather than the software.

Then again it's always easier to blame Arhu

Didn't realize the other browsers were affected too. Well, let's hope for the best.

Originally Posted by Arhu


Didn't realize the other browsers were affected too. Well, let's hope for the best.

Most of the time, they aren't affected. I've only had a couple times when an animated gif blew up Chrome. I seem to remember one of those being in the Codex thread. Couldn't tell you whether that was due to the gif itself, a specific problem within the browser, the phase of the moon, the way my shoes were tied, or some exacting combination of all of those. IE pukes on pretty much all of them, or at least it did prior to your tweak.

The problem with the Codex thread is likely revealed by the title!! Anyone who uses that virus called IE gets exactly what they deserve. Use REAL browsers like FF, Opera, or Safari!!

Today there were some posting issues. They should be solved by now.

So much for adding last minute changes and then leaving the site alone for a few hours

Originally Posted by Myrthos
Today there were some posting issues. They should be solved by now.

So much for adding last minute changes and then leaving the site alone for a few hours

Thank you for fixing it.

Yes, thanks. On the one day I actually compose a lengthy post I couldn't actually post it…

Yeah, right

Maybe it's true, and if it is, it can be used as a proof that god exists!

OK, Myrthos it's time to revert that fix.

Thank you for fixing it ! - I found it quite disturbing …