h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

hullo from a frustrated dwaggie.
Three problems are getting bigger and bigger for me:

1.Crashing browser.
My browser of choice [Netscape 4.7] crashes in forums that achieve 'critical mass' of a certain length. This is becoming more frustrating, especially when I enter a conversation that is new to me and I am not watching very carefully. Conversation is unexpectedly long; browser crashes; I lose work in any other windows that might be open. I have tried using *gag* IE, but this is inconvenient as I have all my preferred bookmarks, cookies, settings, mail, set up for Netscape. Also sometimes it wont load longer forums either. When I can control the forums, [like where I rule the world in Damogran] I can start new conversations when necessary. The problem is when I stumble on a long thread somewhere else. It also keeps me outta some of the really good parties.

2.Message threading.
The way the messages thread on the board make it very hard to keep track of postings and responses that take place after other messages have been posted. They are either buried in the middle of the thread, and/or dont follow in sequence after the message they are responding to. Even if you use the left hand side to look for them, you essentially have to reload the forum when you click on the message you want. Sometimes this is VERY time consuming. And sometimes I cant find the new message even after prolonged search. This all makes for very disjointed conversations. I attribute this to eddies in the space-time continuum, but
THERE MUST BE A BETTER WAY...

3. slow server
Download times from h2g2 are getting almost impossible in the evening over here in the states [EST] I have given up trying to use it except in the morning. Dunno if this is just me, but have heard others complain about slowness.

If plans are in the works for fixing any of the above, this dwaggie would be very grateful.

}:=8

Hello nice little dwaggie!
Are you allowing the right hand frame to fully load ( you probably aren't because of 1) )? If not, then linking to it can refresh it on some browsers. Maybe Opera would fix some of these problems? At least it's not Micro$oft....

hullo there, cow!

You are right about the right hand frame, and refreshing it is exactly what I do to get into conversations if I need to. But you gotta catch it BEFORE it crashed [of course]. The problem is that I will sometimes open a link in a new window and forget about it while I am busy in three or four other *grin* windows and then--all of a sudden--CRASH!!!

This usually happens when I am in the middle of revising something, or writing a particularly witty piece *tee hee* and I lose it.

Your suggestion about opera is a good one, 'cept they havent finished porting it to MacOS--beta is supposed to be due out any second tho. I do have iCab for my Macintosh and probably should use it more. I would just rather not hafta switch browsers just to use h2g2.

I sorta wonder howcome tptwvh havent addressed the Netscape problem, since Netscape still has a pretty large market share of devoted users.
Anything to avoid Micro$loth...

Thanks for your suggestions.


}:=8

I don't know if it will help but Netscape offers the following troubleshooting advice for the Mac (from memory you're on a Mac)

http://help.netscape.com/kb/consumer/19970808-15.html

you can also search their knowledgebase from http://help.netscape.com/

hope it helps
;^)#
PS I've noticed the site's been a bit slow for the last 2-3 weeks too on Windoze IE5.1 & I think its an h2g2 problem

hullo Bruce!

long time no talk...

You remember correctly... I am using a Mac. Unfortunately none of the standard Mac-Netscape troubleshooting thingies seem to apply. I keep NN memory up in the 16000-20000 range and this DOES seem to make Netscape happier, but does not solve my crashing problems. Most of the other stuff does not apply, or has been checked. the h2g2 forums is the only place I experience this kind of problem and I do access a couple of other large messageboard-type sites with no difficulty.

The crashing is not my main concern. Would really rather see some different controls on how messages are threaded, selected and displayed in general, though. I can work around the crashing problems, but managing long forums is still a pain in the $%#@ ...

Thanks for the suggestions, though!

blu

Hiya - well about all I can suggest is converting to Windoze & IE then




;^)#

no need to run...

and there ARE other alternatives to windoze, ya know. There's always Linux...

iCab is a nice little Mac browser, and I am waiting for Opera.

So you think it is a Mac issue? not a Netscape issue? or [most importantly] NOT an issue for the h2g2 message boards???????????????

hmmmmmmm????????

so howcum it doesnt happen to me anywhere other than in the h2g2 forums?

}:=8

I promise that there will be improvements in the way large forums are handled, but they're not going to happen overnight. We're working on a major rewrite of the whole site to improve performance, support more users and along the way give you different ways to view the forums. This should overcome most of the problems with large threads overwhelming your browser.

IE crashes on large H2G2 forums as well. Mostly it's timeout errors, which I suspect just means that the H2G2 servers are a bit overloaded for the amount of information they're trying to serve.

Hullo, Jim!
Thanks for the input.

As the site gets bigger and more successful it is taking longer to get around and manage stuff, especially when a lot of long forums are involved.

It is good to know that the 'growing pains' are being addressed. I will be patient, but with a Queendom to run and formal occasions to attend it is getting harder all the time. But it is certainly more exciting than back when it was just all fields here. I await the improvements.

yer friend,
blu

Yep I'm aware of other operating systems - but the serious stuff of computing (Half Life & other games ) just isn't available for most of them - where I live at least.

I don't know enough about Macs to comment about whether its a Mac problem or not - though it's interesting to note that, as far as I'm aware, h2g2 staff generally use Macs with IE4.5 & occassionally Netscape - maybe they could help with some info on their configuration.

>so howcum it doesnt happen to me anywhere other than in the h2g2 forums?

I don't know, but a quick 'view source' on a largeish h2g2 forum reveals a huge chunk of html hitting the browser. I haven't had a problem like this on Windoze - (though I have had the usual random Windoze & www hickups) & I can't recall anyone but Mac users posting about this problem (crashing in long forums).


;^)#

I'm using IE5 on Win2K. As I said above, this combination routinely crashes on large forums (using a loose definition of "crash": the program stays running, but is unable to download the entire page). It gets worse at H2G2 peak times, so I'm fairly certain it's just server overload.

hullo, ffmike!

I have also experienced what you describe when using IE on my Mac. The browser runs, but will not download a complete forum if it is very long. It stalls, but will go on and access other, shorter forums and pages.

BUT, when using Netscape, the browser actually crashes: the program freezes. I can force quit the program and relaunch it, but if I try to access the same forum it will continue to crash the browser.

This does not happen just at peak times. It happens at any time, and consistantly with long forums that reach what I call 'critical mass'. If I 'catch it' early enough while it is still loading, I can click on any message in the left hand window, which reloads the right hand window and THEN the whole conversation will load. That is, the right hand frame will reload. So at least I can read it and post a farewell if I want.

But this is a rather cumbersome way to access the forums.


Different problem:
At peak times the whole system is so slow that it is impractical for me to try to enter conversations. I pretty much avoid doing very much with h2g2 in the evenings for this reason. The system is much quicker for me early in the morning. I am sure that this is server/traffic problems, and not related to the above. Sometimes simply getting a response from the server is difficult at these times. All pages load slowly; no relationship to the length of the conversation. Just slow. Period.

At any rate, the thing I would most like to see happen is the revision of the message board software. I would like to see the most recent messages first, and be able to control how many display, and have better threading, etc., etc. Then we will see if the browser problem is still with us..

}:=8.

AHA!
I just remembered a parallel situation when using Netscape. When loading pages with deeply nested tables, Netscape sometimes behaves exactly like it does with the long forums. Although I am usually on a Mac, I have also had this happen with Netscape running on Windoze. Maybe there is a clue here as to why Netscape is crashing in the forums. I havent really looked at the code too closely, but it looks to me as if it is limitations of the browser, rather than the platform.

Like I said, this is the least important issue, cause when the message software is improved, and bigger better servers are working, maybe this problem will disappear. Well, we can hope, anyway.

}:=8