Posting Difficulties

[Valipac]

WHY are the posts jumping around once you go past 20 lines or so when posting?>

IT IS VERY annoying when you are trying to type, edit, copy or paste something, and the screen jumps up 5 line above where you are attempting to type, edit, copy or paste something.

I have heard from others that it happens to them as well, so it's not just me or my computer.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here, but please post in Technical with more details (incl. which browser you use) and I'll check it out.

I saw this and decided to go ahead and create the thread for it in Technical. I've been having these problems as well. I use Firefox 3 for Ubuntu, I'm not sure what Quazox uses though. It's very annoying however, as you will end up typing a sentence in the wrong location and then have to erase it all and retype it. Happened to me once while writing this post, usually it occurs 2-3 times on my longer IC posts.

[Naivetry]

viewtopic.php?p=105079#p105079

No, I'll just be in the middle of typing a sentence and the cursor will suddenly move up a few lines.

That happens to me, too, but I figured I was hitting some button by mistake (I have a sensitive touchpad on this laptop). It usually happens when I'm trying to paste something I've just found into my post... or after I've paused for a while in typing and come back to the window.

Maybe it has something to do with scrolling? I can't get it to repeat, and it doesn't seem to have a particular trigger.

EDIT: I'm using Firefox 3.0.11, on Windows Vista Basic ( ).

[[violet]]

That sounds very strange. I've never encountered that. The closest I can think of is when I click a button like "QUOTE" and it will insert text at the cursor position.

Let me know how to reproduce the problem and I'll check it out.

[Mt Id]

if ur using a laptop you could be accidentally hitting the side scroll on the touch pad. if u run ur finger up and down the far right of the touch pad it acts like a mouse wheel.

Just a thought.

[Klonor]

This has, in fact, happened to me, and has been the biggest obstacle in my return to NationStates. More than a dozen times I've logged in, planning to write an epic introduction to these new forums (And we all know how epic I am, 'cause I rock like that), and then this happens and, after I finish cursing and spitting and yelling at Jolt (Look at it this way: if we'd never gone to them from our original forums, we'd never have moved to these with this problem, so you can see how it's really all their fault afterall), I copy/past it all to a word document, save it, and plan to come back to it later, but I never do.

As the original poster said, once you've typed enough to "fill" the post box and enable the ability to scroll up or down, there are times when it seems to just randomly jump up and down several lines while typing. The thing is, it's only while typing (Well, typing and clicking). If you click somewhere and the screen jumps, but then don't enter any new information it stays perfectly still. If you scroll up or down with the scroll bar on the right, it stays wherever you leave it...until you click somewhere else in the post box, or type something, or even just press an arrow to move the cursor. I haven't been able to detect a specific pattern or know when exactly it's doing to happen, except to know that once it starts, it keeps going at every click or typing until you close the screen in frustration.

I've tested this with both my regular mouse and the mouse touchpad on my laptop, so I'm pretty sure I'm not just clicking something by accident while typing, and I've also tried to just truddle on and suck it up. If you're a good typist it's not too much of a problem when typing new material, since you don't really need to see what you've already typed unless you want to go back and re-read it, but any spelling mistakes, revisions, or edits are impossible, since you can't see what you're editing; if you scroll back and see a spelling error, once you begin deleting that word the screen jumps away again and you don't know what letters you have deleted, where you are in the line, etc. (FYI, it was while typing this line that my screen began jumping. I have no clue what words I have misspelled here, hopefully none, but I will leave this parent=hesis unedited to show what I mean by the difficulties in working with this). Okay, re-reading that I see only one spelling error, "parent=hesis," but I hope you see my point.

I use Internet Explorer version 8.0.6001.18783 (And that number was hard to write, since I'm sleepy and couldn't remember the whole thing at once, so since I couldn't look at it while I was typing, what with the whole jumping thing, I had to keep closing the "About Internet Explorer" box to re-read what numbers I'd already written) on a Windows Vista laptop. Do we have any clue what's causing this?

[[violet]]

Thanks for testing! Okay, lemme see if I have this right: the problem is not that the cursor is moving, but that the entire browser window jumps, as if you had quickly scrolled it. The cursor stays where it's supposed to (or goes where it's supposed to, if you've just click inside the post box). Is that correct?

Some more questions:

1. What is your screen resolution?
   
2. In a long post, your browser window will have two vertical scroll bars: the one for the post box, and the main one for the entire page. What is the position of the main vertical scroll bar? Does it begin at the very top, and steadily jump down as this problem occurs? I'm not sure which scroll bar you are referring to sometimes in your description of the problem: the post box one, or the main window one.
   
3. Does turning off the NS sidebar fix the problem? (User Control Panel -> Board Preferences -> Edit display options -> Display NationStates sidebar)

[Klonor]

Thanks for testing! Okay, lemme see if I have this right: the problem is not that the cursor is moving, but that the entire browser window jumps, as if you had quickly scrolled it. The cursor stays where it's supposed to (or goes where it's supposed to, if you've just click inside the post box). Is that correct?

Exactly, so I can (and do) keep typing, except the post box is displaying two paragraphs above where I'm typing and still jumping, so it's very distracting, and I can't see whatever errors I've made or what, precisely, I've written.

Some more questions:

1. What is your screen resolution?
   

1280x800 (At least, according to the "Graphics Properties" window that pops up when I right-click on the desktop.

In a long post, your browser window will have two vertical scroll bars: the one for the post box, and the main one for the entire page. What is the position of the main vertical scroll bar? Does it begin at the very top, and steadily jump down as this problem occurs? I'm not sure which scroll bar you are referring to sometimes in your description of the problem: the post box one, or the main window one.

Ah, I should have been clearer; the main Internet Explorer window (With our NationStates navbar on the left, smiley box on the right, etc.) stays completely still. It is the post box itself, and the scroll-bar associated with that box, which jumps around. Also, note that it is while writing this paragraph that my box began jumping. It was during the first sentence, after I had already written my previous comments, and the quoted text following this was already in the box.

Does turning off the NS sidebar fix the problem? (User Control Panel -> Board Preferences -> Edit display options -> Display NationStates sidebar)

I have no idea, I never thought to try. I'll give that a try now, and will be back in a second.

[Klonor]

I have turned the nav bar off, and it still jumps around (And now I feel all lonely and abandoned without that navbar).

I have, however, noticed something about the jumping bit. It seems it's not when you push/click/type that it jumps around, but when you stop that it jumps. When typing, it's when you release the key that the box jumps up several spaces; while typing to test out the navbar hypothesis, I held down several keys just to fill up space. While the keys were held down, the screen was perfectly stable, it was only when I let the key pop up (After having repeatedthe letter "J" about twenty times) that the box shifted. When typing, whenever you press a key the box goes to the proper place, and only jumps away when you let a key up. Considering each word has several letters it's jumping back and forth several times a second (Depending on how fast you type), so it's still distracting, but perhaps this info will help.

[Skeelzania]

I get this problem when I post at work (shhhh). Here I'm using Internet Explorer, while at home I use Firefox. I'm not sure if I encounter the problem there as well; ever since the days of the forum eating your post after a few minutes, I've been typing anything of length in MSWord or Notepad.

[[violet]]

whenever you press a key the box goes to the proper place, and only jumps away when you let a key up. Considering each word has several letters it's jumping back and forth several times a second (Depending on how fast you type), so it's still distracting

Wow. That's really crazy.

I've found discussion of this problem here and here. It seems to be an IE8-specific problem, affecting quite a range of sites. I can probably hack up a workaround.

[[violet]]

OH MY GOD. I just managed to reproduce it in IE8. That is NUTS.

[Klonor]

See? SEE!?!?!?! Ain't that just a bitch? I tell ya, if I wasn't hopelessly addicted to this game, and had absolutely nothing else in my life worth doing, facing that on these forums might have gotten me to consider thinking about possibly moving on to another game...okay, probably not, but there's always a chance.

Also, the first two guys (Valipac and Naivetry) said they were using Firefox, not IE8, but since I'm not actually aware what the difference is between the two (I mean, I know they're different programs, but I don't actually know what the difference is, referring to how they're coded, how they interact with servers, etc.) I'll just nod and smile (It's how I get through most of the internet).

[[violet]]

I deeply appreciate your hopelessness.

I think I've fixed it now -- you may have to log out & back in, and/or do a browser refresh (press F5) for it to take effect.

[Klonor]

Q'plah!

It looks like it's working, but maybe not (Hey, don't give me that look, I'm trying for a complete and comprehensive report here). When I went back to edit previous posts where this happened (My previous posts in this thread) it kept jumping, which it also did when I did a bit of copy/past from a word document that was itself a copy/paste from a previous jumping post here (Can we all follow that?), but just now when I filled this post box down past the edge (Primarily pressing "enter" a lot and putting in a few words every couple of lines to fill up the space) it did not jump, it worked just fine.

So I'm moderately excited with mediocre joy, as it looks like it might have fixed the problem...potentially.

Either way, kudos to [violet]!

[Tanaara]

Wow, it's good to see that some one other than I had this problem - I was on my folks comp, it uses IE 7 and it was killing me! Then I got my comp back and it doesn't happen there - hasen't ever-

But on my folks comp it was doing exactly as Klonor stated.

Waves at Klonor and "Good to see you back"