Character Login Double Logging in and Setting Messages to Read

[loren]

Has anyone else clicked play for a character only to see no messages even though you have 48 unread when you click play?  You can also see that sometimes it thinks you've tried to set your destination twice in a row to the same region.

[De-Legro]

Has anyone else clicked play for a character only to see no messages even though you have 48 unread when you click play?  You can also see that sometimes it thinks you've tried to set your destination twice in a row to the same region.

I haven't seen this in more then a year. What browser/system are you using?

[loren]

Firefox 9(?), windows 7.

I might also be seeing it on Fedora 15, Firefox 8.0  I'll have to double check.

It happens once in a while, not every day.  I'll try to remember what system I'm on and post next time.

The weird thing is that sometimes I'll click play for one character and get sent to a character I just was looking at.

PS - This should ge tmoved to helpline?  Guess I posted to the wrong area oops.

[De-Legro]

Firefox 9(?), windows 7.

I might also be seeing it on Fedora 15, Firefox 8.0  I'll have to double check.

It happens once in a while, not every day.  I'll try to remember what system I'm on and post next time.

The weird thing is that sometimes I'll click play for one character and get sent to a character I just was looking at.

PS - This should ge tmoved to helpline?  Guess I posted to the wrong area oops.

Unless the fault is the user (some people manage to double click which has these effects) then it is likely to be a bug. I recall someone else having the problem of being logged into a different characters some months ago, I thought it was resolved.

[Anaris]

This is a double-click error.

This does not mean (necessarily) that you are actually double-clicking on the "play" link (though that is one potential cause of it); for some reason, occasionally the server receives multiple successive requests for the same page, as if you had double-clicked, even when you clearly did not.

We have been working on eliminating these problems as we can, but it is not always easy.

[loren]

I figured it was something like that Anaris.

It just happened on a work computer (Login no new messages).  Windows 7 (no SP1), Firefox v3.6.25 (gasp)

I'll see if I can wrangle an update.

[^ban^]

I figured it was something like that Anaris.

It just happened on a work computer (Login no new messages).  Windows 7 (no SP1), Firefox v3.6.25 (gasp)

I'll see if I can wrangle an update.

Is it repeatable and does your work access the web through a proxy?

[loren]

If it happens with one character it happens with them all. Sometimes you'll login as the right character but no messges.  Sometimes you'll login as the first character you login as.

If I close the browser and reload it usually fixes itself.  If you're asking if it always happens with this configuration the answer is no.

Edit: Unknown about the proxy.  Its the campus network.  Each computer has its own IP that registers when ask whoami, so unlikely.

[Fury]

Yes, YES - finally 

Loren, you can tell everyone I'm not crazy here:
http://bugs.battlemaster.org/view.php?id=6467

Especially since if it's: just me/just my browser/just my computer/ then no one's going to think it's a bug.

[Indirik]

This "double click" thing is a known bug. Certain changes have been made in some places to prevent it from happening there. More changes are planned to address it in other places as well.

[Fury]

Well, when Tom said if it was happening to everyone it would have triggered 50 bug reports by now and I was the only one reporting (in recent times) ... then yeah - I was starting to think it was just me.

I read the bug reports on this double-clicking before and the complainant was always told that it wasn't them that was double-clicking but that it was the game that thought they were double-clicking.

However, no one ever explained why the game would think that. Is there more information? Is it just this game? The internet in general? Is it the user side? The server side? As users, can we do anything to minimize it? These kinds of things...

[egamma]

However, no one ever explained why the game would think that. Is there more information? Is it just this game? The internet in general? Is it the user side? The server side? As users, can we do anything to minimize it? These kinds of things...

It could be something like the click request--actually a GET HTTP request--is received by the server, but the server doesn't send an acknowledgement back--and so your browser re-transmits the packet, and the server thinks that it was 'clicked' twice.

Although I think sequence numbers would prevent that from happening...anyway, it's something like that, probably.

[Indirik]

I know that this is not really all that helpful, but...

However, no one ever explained why the game would think that.

We don't know.

Is there more information?

No.

Is it just this game?

Don't know. In most web surfing, it really doesn't matter if the server gets your request twice. So, it gets two requests for the page, big deal. The content is almost certainly the same on the second load that you actually see. So, would you even notice that it had been "double-clicked"?

Warning: I'm no HTML expert, and I could have some fundamental conceptual errors in this... Also, there are different methods by which a browser can get a page. A "GET" action and a "POST" action. Clicking the "Play" button for your character triggers a "GET" action. If you double-click it, then you send two GETs. The server receives and processes both GETs. When you submit a form, though, your browser sends a POST action to the server. If your browser double-sends a POST action, the server will automatically detect and filter that out. Or something like that. The dev team is possibly looking at switching various things from GET to POST to help auto-filter out that doubled-send of the action. Or it could be that I have completely misunderstood what they've been talking about.

The internet in general? Is it the user side? The server side? As users, can we do anything to minimize it? These kinds of things...

Maybe. Possibly. Could be. Probably not.



FWIW - I think I may have only seen this myself once or twice, ever.

[loren]

Would it be useful to code in a timeout period between requests from the same location/for the same script??

[De-Legro]

Would it be useful to code in a timeout period between requests from the same location/for the same script??

It is actually outside of the control of the game code, responding to the request is handled by the HMTL server code, ie APACHE. If we did code an elaborate why for our scripts to know a second request was made, and thus not hand the server a second page, likely you would just get a HTML error as your browser is expecting a response from that second request. Even more elaborate code could probable track a second request and feed it the same page again, but you know the problem with elaborate code, it breaks in unexpected ways. My day job is designing control systems for Public Utilities, power plants, water treatment that sort of thing. The industry has been moving towards using web interfaces for the SCADA control element. The old practise of implementing vital control routines in the SCADA system (which was never best practise anyway, but was very common) is now responsible for about 60% of the bugs I resolve. Complicated code to try and mangle the way web technologies were designed to deliver some new outcome is just problematic.