Firefox AND MSIE issues

marchey
 February 11, 2008, 07:01 AM posted in General Discussion

Hello!

For the last few days a great part of this website has become unusable for me and I really mean unusable. The issues are:

 1. In Firefox the flash playack of the sentences in the dialogue section as well as in the expansion section breaks easily, especially after enlarging the font size by using Ctrl + Scrolling Wheel. Once it is broken it remains so until rebooting the PC.

2. So I reluctantly started using MSIE for this website. But there I found there is another issue: the popups with the large size characters + pinyin + translation are supposed to appear close to the word you indicate. However, this only seems to work when you look at the page in normal size. Once you enlarge the view (again by using Ctrl + Scrolling Wheel) the popup seems to get unstuck, displaying lower and lower and ultimately on a non-visible part of the page.

I want to raise the alarm on both these issues. For the record, I am in charge of a helpdesk for 1.300 PC users in a governemental organisation. We are used to dealing with this kind of problem. I have  tried to find a solution, I have also consulted with several people of my 10+ staff. We perceive this as a real problem. Unfortunately, I can't track down the root of the problem. I just hope that someone else can because this is the kind of annoying stuff that drives away potential customers. So CPod, please have a look into this and at least document it. 

For the firefox problem: I know not everybody seems to suffer from this problem. I suspect it has to do with some sort of incompatibility between different components. If someone has a clue, please tell me.

 

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phil
 February 11, 2008, 08:33 AM

marchey, Regarding the Firefox/Flashplayer problem, the following is part of an email that I sent to JohnP a couple of weeks ago. It has been randomly reported for a while and seems to be occur only with certain Firefox/Flash combinations. I am using IEtab in Firefox until a solution is found. I and others have reported problems with Firefox and Flashplayer where the sounds do not play. Some have reported the problem only with the vocab and expansion sound files. This has been bugging me for some time! I found today a thread on Mozilla - bugzilla which appears to be consistent with what I am experiencing. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=289873 Basically the problem only occurs when 15 or more audio files are loaded. My experience is as follows: Start Firefox Go to CPod Go to any e.g. elementary lesson dialogue with less than 15 audio files - sounds play OK Go to vocabulary of same lesson with more than 15 audio files - no sound Return to dialogue - no sounds If I shut down Firefox and restart and go direct to a vocabulary with more than 15 audio files - no sounds If I shut down and restart and jump around elementary lessons from dialogue to dialogue with less than 15 sound files it will continue to work Seems that once any one page is loaded with more than 15 audio files, flash player stops working even after exiting that page It is surprising that the bug has been reported since 2005 and is still "live" to this day without a solution

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marchey
 February 11, 2008, 09:36 AM

The 15 audio files observation is consistent with what I experience. The problem only occurs in the Expansion session. And only when I start scrolling down. As the files only start loading when they become visible the first time, this makes sense. Afterwards nothing works anymore, I guess it is because they are cached..

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phil
 March 14, 2008, 03:46 PM

Here's the latest entry from the above bugzilla thread. Maybe a Flashplayer fix is not too far away. "Ilan Berkner 2008-02-25 10:40:15 PDT I wanted to let everyone know that I just got a response from Adobe about this issue. I had opened a ticket with them a while back about this and they finally responded. I'd like to attach the Adobe file that they actually e-mailed me, but instead, below is a copy of the text of their response. ---- BELOW IS RESPONSE FROM ADOBE ---- Thank you for contacting Adobe Technical Support. I do apologize for the late reply. We do appreciate you finding the time to report this bug. This has been replicated on our end and labeled as a bug by our engineering team. Please know that this is being worked on by engineering and hopefully it will be fixed by the next update of Flash player. Thank you. Regards, Thomas S Flash Player Support Engineer Adobe Systems, Inc. ---- END OF RESPONSE FROM ADOBE ----"

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lostinasia
 March 15, 2008, 12:35 AM

Uh oh... This thread... http://chinesepod.com/connections/viewpost/LostInAsia/connect/Flash+Based+Vocabulary%3A+A+Major+Step+Backwards ...is about one solution that ChinesePod tried, and the result. Short version: they tried something to fix it, it sort of worked (but not as well as hoped); however, the solution messed up other people instead, and has now been shelved.