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

We are (with a Awful lot of help from SEF) trying to find out what pages Digibox users can use and what pages they cannot.

Most important, we are trying to find out how many links, pictures, similes etc; it takes to stop the Digibox loading the page

This way we hope to be able to people advice on what to put on their pages, and be able to spot problems next time they arise


So if you can tell us here of any page that you have trouble getting into we will have a look and try to find out the problem


madna

Its probably not a a good time to be doing this, what with the buggy new software.

Before I got the update, I could get into SEF's space and then it was added to and I couldn't, I don't know how much was added though. After getting the update I found I could get into just about everyone's, including pedboy's and I was looking for the the thread that manda did with all the smilies to see if I could download that (couldn't find it though). It seems to have settled a bit since, probably as more people have been updated, but I'll have a look around and see what boots.

U50994 - Amy has just booted me.

Thanks kow.

I thought you had managed to get back into my space after I removed a few people from the friends list (and persuaded others to remove me). I may have to turn the reciprocal friends off if people keep adding me!

The first things which strike me about Amy's space are that enormous journal entry and friends lists which look longer than mine. A text limit seemed to apply more to editing pages on digiboxes though. The number of pictures and smileys looks fairly small but there must be a lot of links for all the people. I'll get some stats...

It is 113K in plain - which is quite large.
There are 31 smileys (and no other successful images).
There were 330 links (crude count of HREF).

I suppose now I need test pages with that sort of length text or with smileys or links to compare and find out which factor is most fatal (if any).

Hi
I cant get into "Retrieve my details" the first page is ok, but when you click onto "step 2" it just takes you you back to the beginning.
So it would appear digibox users cannot change thier password etc!!
Theres also alot of personal spaces unavailiable...i've discovered in my.....errr..lurkings

The personal spaces of Helelou2 and Brigdeer werekitty have both started resetting for me since they were added to. I can get the u numbers when I'm next in the library, or they're both on my friends list.

Hi Venus,

Intern was having a problem with "Retrieve my details" too (couldn't get to the 3rd page to change them). He reported it on F48000?thread=342563 (though it was probably also discussed on one of the threads on A1027171). Midnight Angel duplicated the query to the BBCiTesters group. One of the staff said they were looking into it. There has been no answer so far and if nothing further happens by the weekend I'll see if I can get an alternative form for it working on collective.

Thanks St.Serephina, I'll see if I can find those and "measure" their contents.

U222700 is 96K in plain. I counted 118 visible images (mostly smileys) though there were 330 IMG tags and U50994 had only had 64 IMG tags. There was a fairly long pair of friends lists but other links too, giving an HREF count of 477. I think that is probably the main issue.

U193430 is 77K in plain. I counted 50 visible images with 83 IMG tags. Again the friends lists were long and the HREF count was 378. Links really do seem to be the killer as far as digiboxes are concerned. Unless I can find something else distinctive about problem pages.

Now for the presumably working ones:

U218978 is only 37K. It had 8 visible images with 40 IMG tags. There were 232 HREF links.

U191719 is 60K. It had 24 visible images with 55 IMG tags. There were 363 HREF links. That is *very* close to the 378 of one of the problem pages!

Thanks SEF

U211824 is 108K in plain. It only has 3 real images with 35 IMG tags (the other 32 in each case must be fixed page layout stuff such as the missing SSO ones). There were 277 HREF links. So if mine is not visible it may be the size rather than the links.

NB People who failed to migrate properly to SSO have often ended up with a new high-numbered account. They can re-add their friends to the new account but can't remove any from their old accounts even if they wanted to do so. That's why reciprocal friends lists may go up and be impossible to reduce short of hiding the whole thing.

It is worth noting that of that 108K only 82K was actually my content. The remaining 26K was system generated and is therefore largely invariant between people's PS pages. Jim Lynn said SSO was responsible for 5K extra per page but that may not have been in plain skin. Anyhow, I just cut my content down to 46K. So I would now expect a total of 72K (but with another couple of links).

there seems to be a problem with the <./>Info</.> page sometimes you cant access it


Star Fleet

The info page is not something which is stored by the system. It has to be created from some database queries when requested by a viewer (just like search does). So when the site is slow it takes a long time to prepare. During this time the digibox (or even a PC browser) will often give up and declare the page unfetchable. Meanwhile the page actually does get prepared and served up to the now unresponsive box/browser. There have been reports that it gets saved by the system for a little while such that if one immediately requests it again after a failure it is "immediately" available.

The interesting thing is that not all parts of the info page have to be requested in one go. That speeds up the database search time and makes it more likely that the page will arrive in time to be shown. If you are just interested in conversations try <./>info?cmd=conv</.>. If you are interested in articles try <./>info?cmd=art</.>.

i'll try that

I cant get in to Dr Anthea's page shes an ace. help

U203430 = Dr.Anthea

The size of the page in plain is 113K (one of the largest).

The number of links is 326 (very high and probably due to the long reciprocal friends list).

The number of images is 52 (quite reasonable).

My first recommendation would be that the reciprocal friends list be turned off. I don't know whether she would be willing to do this though. If you wanted to ask you could leave her a message via this link: <./>AddThread?forum=99106&article=830260</.>

Otherwise I could give you links for other aspects of the page such as the message forum F99106, the journal <./>MJ203430?Journal=99359</.> or conversation list <./>MP203430</.>

i once got an email that gave me access to internet explorer..it had a lia link on it that said click here to upgrade and from there i was able to access he whole web,,i can't seem to find it anymore but it it was really good at the time through my box i was able t get all over do you know of an anything like this

That's interesting crazyhorse. I don't know how you could run internet explorer on a digibox though. However, other people have reported times when TeleWest's firewall is down for a little while and they can access the rest of the internet. The trick would be in spotting those occasions and being ready to take advantage of them.