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

Hmm... actually, going back on what I said previously, I rather like this new look.
But my browser KEEPS CRASHING! I don't want to delete my Cache as all my dear little Cookies will be gone for ever, messing up my web viewing experiance.
Anyone got some tips? Oh yeah, and when I clicked on the 'Feedback' button just now, I got the old Goo-style display - and I've changed skins! Odd. Because I'd been viewing this Feedback page, new-skinned, earlier this very evening.

I've tried changing back and forth between skins tonight and even clearing my temp.files it's clear that the things aren't quite right. First of all the alabaster version of my homepage refused to update itself. Now I've completely changed back to goo my IE5 icons at the top of the page have turned black. I don't mind but I thought I'd let you know I figure that switching between the two skins actually does put pressure on the system somehow.

Mr T

Clearing your cache in IE5 or Netscape 4.7 should leave the cookies intact, provided that is you do it from the browser tools and not by zapping the directory.

whether you see a page in the alabaster or the classic goo depends on where the browser pulls the page from, if it gets it from the server it will be downloaded in the skin you have currently selected butif it pulls it from the cache then it will load with the skin you last viewed it with.

My preference at the moment is to use alabaster (because I prefer the Screen layout) but when I load a page which looks wrong in that skin I switch to classic goo for that page only.

To do this just add "?skin=classic" without the quotes at the end of the url

Androyd
The black icons and images in IE5 was a problem I had even before the upgrade I think its an IE thing, if you scroll the page up & down they come back in colour, (don't ask me why I never can fathom out microsoft stuff)

I was actually far more concerned that my page just stopped updating in alabaster. I have actually been using alabaster more but I having the page hang up has put me right off - why should that happen? It was only when I changed back to goo and then back to alabaster fairly soon afterwards. I've never had problems before. Thanks for the tip about viewing in goo.

Androyd
I'm not quite sure what you mean by your page not updating in alabaster?
I'm using alabaster and I haven't seen anything I would describe like that.

I've run into the problem of the page not updating, I believe it has to do with the cache, after updating, hit the reload button, it seems to work for me. Just a suggestion

Well what I mean is this: message are given times when they have occurred and what I mean is that however many times I went away from the page or refreshed it or returned to it, no new messages or even message times appeared. For example one reply stayed at 23 minutes ago for two hours. At that point I cleared temp files changed to goo and went back and sure enough, there had been other replies and the timing system was working fine again. Now just before this occurring I had changed profiles to goo and then back to alabaster. Why should this happen?

Thanks for the advice but I tried updating and refreshing and even going offline and coming back and leaving the site and returning but it just stayed frozen. It's OK 'cos I'm staying with goo at the moment but it's keeping me away from alabaster.

I'm not sure if I'm right on this, I think Jim or Bruce said in another conversation that they are now caching forums as well as the articles to speed up the site.
I wonder if when you change your preferences there is still a copy of the page in the sites cache in the other skin which is not being updated because its not the current preference.

As I said above I have stayed in alabaster and just flick the occasional article back to the goo if its unreadable, I haven't noticed any page hangs in the way you describe but it does seem to take a while for postings to filter through the servers and get recorded on my home page. (if i update my home page shortly after posting something the most recents posts don't always show)

Yep I noticed that there were delays in updates appearing but they just seemed to get worse and then stopped altogether. hey who needs it - I'm back with goo and much happier