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I sometimes have Trouble loading paizo.com home page on a smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S4, using latest version of Android OS (build L720TVPUC0H1) and Chrome (47.02526.83). The problem manifests as the page starting to load, flashing on the screen briefly, and then going blank, with the page loading progress bar getting stuck (usually less than half way through). Normally (connecting from 3G/4G) this only happens a minority of the time, and reloading the page usually works. But connecting from a hotel WiFi (Towneplace by Marriott) -- not sure who their provider is), it is happening a majority of the time, thus requiring several retries to get the home page to load and stay loaded. So far, this doesn't seem to happen on Paizo pages other than the home page.
This problem does not occur on a normal computer, even one too old to support the security protocol required by the secure parts of the site.
By the way, it's not just a 1 night thing -- it's still happening at high frequency on the hotel wiFi, and happened at low frequency on 3G/4G for months before this (basically ever since I started using a smartphone to access the paizo.com home page).
Could your Marriott hotel be injecting weird stuff into their wifi that is re-writing the webpages on the fly? Marriott supposedly turned it off after they were discovered, but perhaps it is back in use in some modified/updated form? Can you set up a VPN to test if the problem goes away?
Not sure how I would set up a VPN to test this, unless (A) Paizo wanted to go to the trouble to do something of the sort; (B) I had a computer at home that wasn't a piece of junk that I could leave on with VPN software that my phone could talk to; or (C) my work did VPN and decided NOT to block Paizo (which it currently does).
I have a suspicion that even if this JavaScript injection is occurring, it isn't the whole problem, since I can get the problem on regular 3G/4G, just with considerably less frequency. And it probably is not occurring, because I can load up pages with no advertising in them (for instance, Wikipedia).
Hmmm. Have you tried using wifi from another source, like Starbucks or McDonald's? I would ordinarily recommend trying Opera for Android to test whether it is in the connection or the browser, but it is Chromium-based, so it could very well have the same rendering/loading issues as your are experiencing with Chrome. Maybe Firefox?
There was an update to Android System WebView that came out in the last week or so, but that is for apps that access the Web internally. Maybe something new/changed in the WebView update also updated a shared file that Chrome uses? I dunno, I'm just spitballing here. I don't mean to be an irritation, sorry.
^No, these are perfectly valid suggestions, even if I can't try all of them. I will have to see if I can try this on a WiFi at a place that I am visiting when not preoccupied with other issues.
Ditto; I've had this problem on my smartphone for awhile now but I thought it was just me (or my phone, which is a Droid Razr M).
Okay, now I finally tried it on a WiFi at a nursing home, and this problem still occurs. Rough estimates of frequency:
3G/4G: between 10% and 25% occurrence
Towneplace by Marriott WiFi: about 90% occurrence
Nursing home WiFi: between 50% and 75% occurrence
I've had this problem as well with my phone, both at home and while I was out. Most of the time reloading the page after a couple of seconds helps, and it doesn't happen all that often, but still.
I'm also experiencing the same phenomenon on my PC, even reported it a while ago, but folks immediately jumped on me using ProxMate as the reason (and I am 110% sure it has nothing to do with that).
Earlier today, confirmed that the frequency of this problem on 3G/4G is still relatively low, so it isn't that something on the site changed coincident with when I flew from Boston to Georgia.
I have this problem with my phone as well. My phone will load the homepage for a split second before going blank. If I go directly to any other page on the site, it loads fine.
I have the same problem, regardless of where I connect or whether I'm on WiFi or LTE. I use a Nokia Lumia 920 running Windows Phone 8.1. It's sporadic, with no rhyme or reason I can discern.
I have the same problem on my laptop, oddly enough.
If you bookmark a page other than the homepage, you can just go straight to that. It's just the home page with the issues, whatever they may be.
Even non-home pages that often look an awful lot like the home page (for instance, product announcement pages) seem not to have this problem.
Tried Atlanta Airport WiFi -- so far seems to have this problem about 25\ of the time.
Recently, the frequency on 3G/4G mobile data seems to have increased to about 50%.
Anybody ever figure out what is going on with this? It still happens, about like before.
Same problem on my PC. Weird.
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In my experience it seems to be a problem with the Blink and/or Webkit rendering engines interacting poorly with something in the sidebar. If I tell the page to stop loading before the right sidebar is rendered, I never have any problem. However, the blank page and NSL (never-stop-loading) problem always seems to correspond to the right sidebar being rendered.
It definitely depends partly upon the particular WiFi service. I am trying this now at Boston's Logan Airport and this is the worst I have ever seen of this problem. But it is not completely dependent upon the WiFi -- it still happens significantly often on mobile data (3G/4G).
. . . And less (although still some) on the WiFi network of MicroTel by Wyndham).
Edit: Or maybe I spoke too soon -- now seems to be doing it more than 75% of the time. Maybe some timing issue on WiFi/3G/4G has a bad interaction with the bad interaction with the sidebar, and it can change over time?
Strangely, have never had it happen on any PC (tried both Firefox and Chrome), but I haven't tried a WiFi/3G/4G connected PC. Of course, I don't have a way to get a Smartphone on a wired connection to try the opposite either . . . .
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All of a sudden, this seems to have gotten much worse. Used to be that anywhere from 1 to 5 attempts would get the home page up on my phone (even just a few days ago), but today it took more than 10, maybe even closer to 20 (I lost count), even on 3G mobile data.
Last time I tried wasn't quite as bad as what I posted before, but still took 7 tries before I got the page to load.
I want to say I am having this issue massively over 4g/3g but not at all on my home wifi
I have this problem using the stock browser in my Samsung S5, but works fine in Firefox.
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I have this same problem with Android/Chrome on a Galaxy Note 4, latest OS. Try to load paizo.com homepage, shows momentarily, goes blank, never finishes the page load and stays blank. Works from sub-url (as in this post). 100% reproducible. Firefox works fine.
Looks like this issue has been present for over a year. Paizo - is there any update? Thx.
I've been having this same problem for months on a Kindle Fire using the default Silk browser, even after multiple updates. Strangely, if I access the store page or the message boards directly, the site works fine until I navigate to the home page.
Incidentally, I have no problems with the home page when using Firefox on my desktop or laptop.
Paizo, your homepage is now buggered in Firefox mobile too. Please aknowledge this issue and say that you are aware of the problem and are trying to do something about it.
Same problem that OP here. This is my home WIFI.
It seems to occur more often when it is not during work hours than during work hours (someone in the office). It could be coincidence, or there could be something to it. I'm thinking it MIGHT deal with how many views the page has gotten before a refresh? When it has so many views it hits a point in the code where it won't load on certain browsers?
The other things I've noticed is that it seems that it could also be something on the page that is having trouble loading in and of itself and if it doesn't load, it locks up the entire page. I will sometimes get the page to flash for a half second and then the entire screen goes white, indicating that the basic code is loading, but then something tries to pop up and interferes with the entire process.
Also, there's a higher chance of the main home page working if you go backwards (go to a page like the forums and then go to the main page) then if you go to it directly.
Still seeing this issue. If the web devs want to do any debugging in real time and cannot reproduce it in house, feel free to contact me.
The steps to reproduce are easy:
1. Android smartphone latest OS
2. Open Chrome
3. New tab / enter paizo.com
-- site draws for a second, then screen goes white
Problem is, it's not consistent. Sometimes it works for me (Pixel XL), sometimes it doesn't. I've seen it change behaviour when transitioning from 3G to Wifi.
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Yes, this happens to me too, which I can usually avoid by going straight to the message board link or some other deeper page.
However, as I tried it tonight, it's not going to the message board. It's forcing a load to the home page, which then hangs, somewhat predictably (but not always).
So I cannot get to any page on Paizo now from my phone.
Any help Paizo?
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The problem with the Paizo home page loading and then suddenly going blank appears to be originating inside of paizo-libraries-002.min.js, specifically in the AJAX requests that occur at line 106 of the minified source.
It's hard to read this minified crap but in stepping through it in the console debugger, the home page hits this code region twice. On the second time through, the response results in no content or NULL content, and the code in the javascript says to replace the root page with the response...and since the response is empty, the web browser re-renders a completely blank document. Or sometimes you end up with <html></html>, but that's still a blank document. It's not clear why you get one or the other, but I didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure that out.
P.S. This happens almost 100% of the time on a mobile device, but maybe 10% of the time in Chrome on a desktop.
P.P.S. You're welcome.
P.P.P.S. Obviously the AJAX call isn't intended to target the page root for the update--I think, but don't know for sure, that it's the product listing/browser--but there's a bug somewhere that causes the variable pointing to that section in the DOM to end up pointing at the root, and when no content loads, the root gets splatted.
Software Test Engineer
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Hey everyone,
The issue listed above is something we're aware of, and most certainly something that needs to be resolved. I have the problem documented on our list of issues but it's been around so long I worry it's fallen to the wayside. This is a good reminder for me to bring it to the attention of our priority meeting team next time I get a chance, I appreciate it.
If you go directly to the secure site, e.g., secure.paizo.com, or even directly to your account page, the problem does not occur (not that I've ever seen). This problem appeared 6 months ago or so and we had a similar discussion then.
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I have the problem documented on our list of issues but it's been around so long I worry it's fallen to the wayside. This is a good reminder for me to bring it to the attention of our priority meeting team next time I get a chance, I appreciate it.
As a reminder, in early 2016 mobile statistics from a variety of sources put the majority of web traffic as coming from mobile devices. And, of course, it is your home page, the main gateway through which new customers come to your site.