Ever since the new forum rollout, I have been completely locked out of posting here, spanning several Firefox versions ranging from 26 to 30. Every time I tried to reply, clicking either the "Preview" or the "Post Reply" button does not permit anything through, and returns to the quick-reply box (because no other type of reply box even exists on this forum) with red text below it "Please write something in the comment box." It's been almost five months now, and still hasn't been fixed; part of the reason, I'm sure, is due to the fact that I have tried to file a bug report about this ever since the beginning, but attempting to submit anything in the feedback form gives only the message--surprise!--"Please write something in the comment box."
Recently, I gave thought to creating a new topic and found that the preview button actually worked there. It appears, then, that the "create-thread" module uses a different codebase than the module for viewing and replying to them, and I might as well post this bug report since there's no other way I can spread word about it here.
Remember that unless and until this is fixed, I will be unable to reply here to any inquiries. Still, the knowledge that one of the post forms has code that works, while at least two others fail to go through for me, should suffice for those who have the self-appointed privilege of being allowed to look at the code, to figure out how to prevent crippling bugs like this from arising any longer than they already have.
First, you have my fully expressed permission to make extra threads in the Beta Feedback to continue this discussion. I'll merge them into this thread as it goes, and you can just keep responding via a new thread.
Ok, so lets get a lot of questions out of the way so we can narrow down the issue.
When you try to post, does it attempt to make the actual post, or does it prevent you from even trying to? IE: When you hit post reply, does the comment box gray out and have a little pacman on it? If so, does it do the gray/pacman for a split second, or for several seconds?
Hold CTRL and Press F5, or (if it won't cause issues with you elsewhere) go into options and clear all history. (Tools>Options>Privacy>Clear your Recent History [Select All] Ok). This makes sure that you have a fresh copy of all files, and there isn't a bad/old copy of something saved in your cache.
Do you have an antivirus running, and up to date, etc? I know this is odd, but some viruses detect you making a forum reply and inject links, etc, into the post. This can cause issues.
Does preview work for you?
Do you have any add-ons in your firefox?
Test in internet explorer or chrome, and see if you can reply here.
Try sending me a private message as well.
I know that's a nice little bit of questions and stuff all at once, but we need to eliminate a lot of possibilities and narrow it down to try and get this fixed for ya.
The UI on attempting to post a reply is responsive; it gives the Pac-Man "loading" icon briefly before rejecting my post. The results are the same whether I click "Preview" or "Reply", so I assume it's running into the same rejection on both code paths.
This isn't a machine that even has IE on it. As a test, I went ahead and installed Konqueror, and sent it out for a first run (unmodified) by logging into MTGS. After some abnormally long load times, I was able to get to the forum and successfully preview a post there. Naturally, the next test involved spoofing Firefox into using Konqueror's UA string, which failed again.
PMs work, as do post edits, again because those appear to go through a different codepath like new topics do.
I'm confident there are no system viruses running MITM injection on pages I visit. Like I said, the other browser was noticeably slower at loading the pages here, compared to the snappy response times I consistently get on FF, because web pages aren't above attempting to perform some self-appointed code injection of their own. Too often the code they desire to offload is obviously worthless to the client who's on the hook for the CPU cycles spent running it, and the bandwidth of whatever payloads it may bring in (among other, actively harmful outcomes that are possible), so I take a vigilant stand against such transgressions being allowed to arise in the first place. Even if Konqueror would allow me to post successfully, the performance is just too atrocious to be tolerable for anything longer than that one test.
Adblock is not installed here, but there are two extensions running that might feasibly give rise to the issue in question. The output of activity they list on an ordinary forum topic page is as follows:
RequestPolicy Allowed requests from mtgsalvation.com to - curse.com, cursecdn.com Blocked requests from mtgsalvation.com to - googlesyndication.com, googletagservices.com, google-analytics.com, crwdcntrl.net, imrworldwide.com
No third-party request origins were detected on the page.
If Konqueror can post fine, then it's of course most likely something with firefox.
Try restarting with addons disabled ("Safe Mode"), then trying to post. I understand it might have bad performance, but if we narrow it down, then we know what's wrong. If it's a specific thing NoScript is blocking, for instance, we can find which one and enable access to that one. That way you continue blocking anything noncritical, but let what you have to have through.
If you're willing, you can reset your firefox to it's default state, removing all preferences (etc). See if that works, and then add things back on incrementally. Then if it breaks, you know what did it, and can evaluate. I won't lie, it'll be a slight pain to get it back to where you want it most likely, but it's the best way to test.
Disabling all extensions, and even putting Firefox into safe mode, still doesn't change anything (except making load times longer): "Please write something in the comment box."
Making a new profile for nothing but one visit here, on the other hand, did work. What the hell could possibly be running in safe mode that gets in the way?
Viewing the output of the developer console when loading a page, I see these errors amid other comments and notices of deprecation:
"ReferenceError: tinymce is not defined" (in core.js, line 805)
"ReferenceError: PubMaticGrouped is not defined" (repeated 3 times, from the embedded page code itself)
"ReferenceError: _cc3613 is not defined" (from the embedded page code)
"no element found" (repeated 15 times, all in the user ratings module so this one probably isn't a big deal)
In one of our upcoming updates there is a fix that is suppose to stop some users from getting the constant "Please write something in the comment box" error. I don't know if this will directly fix the issue for you specifically or not. This update is at least a couple of weeks away, possibly a month or so.
I honestly don't know what could be running in FF that stops this in safe mode, except some kind of config setting, or some kind of internal error that an addon changed along the way. The JS errors could potentially cause some issues, but it should either break it or not - a second profile wouldn't fix that kind of error. You honestly might need to completely uninstall/remove firefox, delete all saved profile content, etc, and then reinstall. If a second profile works, then slowly adding addons to that profile could possibly show you where it breaks?
I know that's a bit of extraneous work, but it's our best bet.
It's got to be some random setting or addon that messed something up along the way.
Edit:
For anyone reading this with similar issues
Swapping firefox profiles and them moving everything over did end up working for him. He lost a little profile data and it took some work, but it is a fix if you have this exact issues. He's able to post with no problems now.
Recently, I gave thought to creating a new topic and found that the preview button actually worked there. It appears, then, that the "create-thread" module uses a different codebase than the module for viewing and replying to them, and I might as well post this bug report since there's no other way I can spread word about it here.
Remember that unless and until this is fixed, I will be unable to reply here to any inquiries. Still, the knowledge that one of the post forms has code that works, while at least two others fail to go through for me, should suffice for those who have the self-appointed privilege of being allowed to look at the code, to figure out how to prevent crippling bugs like this from arising any longer than they already have.
Ok, so lets get a lot of questions out of the way so we can narrow down the issue.
When you try to post, does it attempt to make the actual post, or does it prevent you from even trying to? IE: When you hit post reply, does the comment box gray out and have a little pacman on it? If so, does it do the gray/pacman for a split second, or for several seconds?
Hold CTRL and Press F5, or (if it won't cause issues with you elsewhere) go into options and clear all history. (Tools>Options>Privacy>Clear your Recent History [Select All] Ok). This makes sure that you have a fresh copy of all files, and there isn't a bad/old copy of something saved in your cache.
Do you have an antivirus running, and up to date, etc? I know this is odd, but some viruses detect you making a forum reply and inject links, etc, into the post. This can cause issues.
Does preview work for you?
Do you have any add-ons in your firefox?
Test in internet explorer or chrome, and see if you can reply here.
Try sending me a private message as well.
I know that's a nice little bit of questions and stuff all at once, but we need to eliminate a lot of possibilities and narrow it down to try and get this fixed for ya.
No longer staff here.
this is a test edit from the real me
We know for sure it's not an account issue now.
No longer staff here.
This isn't a machine that even has IE on it. As a test, I went ahead and installed Konqueror, and sent it out for a first run (unmodified) by logging into MTGS. After some abnormally long load times, I was able to get to the forum and successfully preview a post there. Naturally, the next test involved spoofing Firefox into using Konqueror's UA string, which failed again.
PMs work, as do post edits, again because those appear to go through a different codepath like new topics do.
I'm confident there are no system viruses running MITM injection on pages I visit. Like I said, the other browser was noticeably slower at loading the pages here, compared to the snappy response times I consistently get on FF, because web pages aren't above attempting to perform some self-appointed code injection of their own. Too often the code they desire to offload is obviously worthless to the client who's on the hook for the CPU cycles spent running it, and the bandwidth of whatever payloads it may bring in (among other, actively harmful outcomes that are possible), so I take a vigilant stand against such transgressions being allowed to arise in the first place. Even if Konqueror would allow me to post successfully, the performance is just too atrocious to be tolerable for anything longer than that one test.
Adblock is not installed here, but there are two extensions running that might feasibly give rise to the issue in question. The output of activity they list on an ordinary forum topic page is as follows:
RequestPolicy
Allowed requests from mtgsalvation.com to - curse.com, cursecdn.com
Blocked requests from mtgsalvation.com to - googlesyndication.com, googletagservices.com, google-analytics.com, crwdcntrl.net, imrworldwide.com
No third-party request origins were detected on the page.
NoScript
Allowed scripts from - mtgsalvation.com, curse.com, cursecdn.com
Forbidden scripts from - googletagservices.com, google-analytics.com, game-advertising-online.com, openx.net, crwdcntrl.net, contextweb.com, adnxs.com, scorecardresearch.com, abmr.net, adtechus.com, pubmatic.com
Try restarting with addons disabled ("Safe Mode"), then trying to post. I understand it might have bad performance, but if we narrow it down, then we know what's wrong. If it's a specific thing NoScript is blocking, for instance, we can find which one and enable access to that one. That way you continue blocking anything noncritical, but let what you have to have through.
If you're willing, you can reset your firefox to it's default state, removing all preferences (etc). See if that works, and then add things back on incrementally. Then if it breaks, you know what did it, and can evaluate. I won't lie, it'll be a slight pain to get it back to where you want it most likely, but it's the best way to test.
No longer staff here.
Disabling all extensions, and even putting Firefox into safe mode, still doesn't change anything (except making load times longer): "Please write something in the comment box."
Making a new profile for nothing but one visit here, on the other hand, did work. What the hell could possibly be running in safe mode that gets in the way?
Viewing the output of the developer console when loading a page, I see these errors amid other comments and notices of deprecation:
"ReferenceError: tinymce is not defined" (in core.js, line 805)
"ReferenceError: PubMaticGrouped is not defined" (repeated 3 times, from the embedded page code itself)
"ReferenceError: _cc3613 is not defined" (from the embedded page code)
"no element found" (repeated 15 times, all in the user ratings module so this one probably isn't a big deal)
I honestly don't know what could be running in FF that stops this in safe mode, except some kind of config setting, or some kind of internal error that an addon changed along the way. The JS errors could potentially cause some issues, but it should either break it or not - a second profile wouldn't fix that kind of error. You honestly might need to completely uninstall/remove firefox, delete all saved profile content, etc, and then reinstall. If a second profile works, then slowly adding addons to that profile could possibly show you where it breaks?
I know that's a bit of extraneous work, but it's our best bet.
It's got to be some random setting or addon that messed something up along the way.
Edit:
For anyone reading this with similar issues
Swapping firefox profiles and them moving everything over did end up working for him. He lost a little profile data and it took some work, but it is a fix if you have this exact issues. He's able to post with no problems now.
No longer staff here.