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Stars Gone


Rustynails

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Thank you to those who replied in order to confirm that they are not seeing the same behavior.

 

To rustynails, try clearing your browser cache and restarting, if you are seeing this behavior on a Windows computer.

 

If that doesn't work, please specify your operating system and browser version to assist in troubleshooting.

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4 minutes ago, rustynails. said:

Now that the jokers have responded. Does anyone have a serious answer?

I was giving you a serious answer. I wanted to show that the star behavior you experienced was not showing when I looked at a cache page. I thought seeing that might be helpful to you as you troubleshoot the issue. 

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I also have the "black box with an X" on cache pages, in place of the "stars".  Windows 7, IE11.

 - But it does say (for example)  "2 out of 5"  right next to those boxes.

It was fine this afternoon (showed stars). I was actually able to play a bit today, and did some more searches.  :)

 

The past two weeks or so, there's a few sites now that tell me "Your browser is unsupported. Please install a new browser to view this promotion".

 - And most know that windows 7 ist kaput next month (or unsupported as well)...

 

I'm starting to feel like that busy mechanic that always seems to have a carpy car.

The other 2/3rds  (in IT/IS ) is so busy, I'll probably have to do that upgrade stuff myself. 

When we first started dating, she made me my first four desktops.    Hmmm...           :D

 

 

 

Edited by cerberus1
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I'm getting it on IE11 in Windows 10.  Various little icons are not loading throughout the site.  I tried logging out/in, I tried clearing browser cache and history.  No effect.

 

This started recently, maybe in the past couple of days.  I wonder what happened.  I'm not immediately seeing a way to fix the stars.  But at some point, we gotta switch to a modern browser anyway.  IE11 is very old, not updated, major web services are warning us that they will stop supporting it, and functions are deprecating.

 

Untitled-aa2.jpg

 

 

Untitled-aa1.jpg

 

 

Edited by kunarion
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OK, what exactly is going on? 

 

Below is the direct link to the TB Icon (just like one that appears as an "X" in my previous post).  I can load the GIF in Edge and it's fine.  I load it in IE11, and it's a black X square, it's the web browser's place holder box that shows that an image should be there, but hasn't loaded. 

 

https://www.geocaching.com/images/WptTypes/sm/21.gif

 

As to the OP, the same effect occurs with the "stars" icon:

https://www.geocaching.com/images/stars/stars2_5.gif

 

For comparison, this "Traditional Cache" icon shows up fine in IE11:

https://www.geocaching.com/images/WptTypes/sm/2.gif

 

[EDIT: I fiddled with a couple of security settings.  No change.]

 

 

Edited by kunarion
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4 hours ago, kunarion said:

I'm getting it on IE11 in Windows 10.  Various little icons are not loading throughout the site.  I tried logging out/in, I tried clearing browser cache and history.  No effect.

 

This started recently, maybe in the past couple of days.  I wonder what happened.  I'm not immediately seeing a way to fix the stars.  But at some point, we gotta switch to a modern browser anyway.  IE11 is very old, not updated, major web services are warning us that they will stop supporting it, and functions are deprecating.

 

Untitled-aa2.jpg

 

 

Untitled-aa1.jpg

 

 

 

Thank You, This is also what I see. All the sudden stars go missing ? Something recent caused them to vanish and if MS doesn't update anymore Groundspeak must have done something. I did restart but it didn't help.

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2 hours ago, rustynails. said:

Something recent caused them to vanish and if MS doesn't update anymore Groundspeak must have done something.

 

I'm not here to tell you how to live your life, but as of 2016, IE11 is a dead platform.  It is so dead that the Microsoft  FAQ announcing it is a dead platform is only available via web.archive.org:

 

Quote

Will Internet Explorer 11 continue to receive updates?

The latest features and platform updates will only be available in Microsoft Edge. We will continue to deliver security updates to Internet Explorer 11 through its supported lifespan. To ensure consistent behavior across Windows versions, we will evaluate Internet Explorer 11 bugs for servicing on a case by case basis.

 

You might consider switching to something that programmers here and on other websites will continue to support.

 

The site may not perform at 100% on Netscape Navigator, either, but that doesn't mean that maintaining backwards compatibility with either that or IE11 is a priority.

Edited by hzoi
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Three stars gif image (stars3.gif) is located in https://www.geocaching.com/images/stars/stars3.gif

If you can not see the image above and you can not open the link to the image then the problem is in the browser cache or missing support for gif images. For example, an antivirus program may have this kind of side effect. Otherwise, it has something to do with the page layout and stylesheets your browsen can not handle. My Internet Explorer 8 doesn't open the geocahing.com website at all.

Edited by arisoft
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1 hour ago, arisoft said:

Three stars gif image (stars3.gif) is located in https://www.geocaching.com/images/stars/stars3.gif

If you can not see the image above and you can not open the link to the image then the problem is in the browser cache or missing support for gif images. For example, an antivirus program may have this kind of side effect. Otherwise, it has something to do with the page layout and stylesheets your browsen can not handle.

 

It cannot be any of those reasons, because other site GIF images load just fine in IE11, such as this one:  2.gif

https://www.geocaching.com/images/WptTypes/sm/2.gif

 

It's the same whether I use the Geocaching.com web page or a direct URL address.  IE11 is old, but that doesn't explain why some icons don't load.

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31 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

LOL, managed to get the file onto a Unix box and:



$ file stars3.gif
stars3.gif: PNG image data, 61 x 13, 8-bit colormap, non-interlaced

 

 

 

Wow, that's some great detective work right there! :D  So it is "the old browser" after all.  Kinda.

 

But why did this issue happen now?  I guess, someone in IT converted a bunch of icons in the past couple of days?

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26 minutes ago, kunarion said:

Wow, that's some great detective work right there! :D  So it is "the old browser" after all.  Kinda.

But why did this issue happen now?  I guess, someone in IT converted a bunch of icons in the past couple of days?

 

For me, it was a couple hours.  Fine at 1600 (my time), home from a simple hide, then zapped around 2000.  :)

 

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5 hours ago, kunarion said:

 

 

Wow, that's some great detective work right there! :D  So it is "the old browser" after all.  Kinda.

 

But why did this issue happen now?  I guess, someone in IT converted a bunch of icons in the past couple of days?

 

Could they upconvert it? Why convert in the first place? If it was working why mess with it? 

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9 hours ago, hzoi said:

 

I'm not here to tell you how to live your life, but as of 2016, IE11 is a dead platform.  It is so dead that the Microsoft  FAQ announcing it is a dead platform is only available via web.archive.org:

 

 

You might consider switching to something that programmers here and on other websites will continue to support.

 

The site may not perform at 100% on Netscape Navigator, either, but that doesn't mean that maintaining backwards compatibility with either that or IE11 is a priority.

 

I'm not a computer expert. Is there an easy conversion including saving existing favorite links?

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2 hours ago, rustynails. said:

Could they upconvert it? Why convert in the first place? If it was working why mess with it? 

There are things that PNG can do that GIF cannot (and vice versa). One advantage of PNG is that it allows partial transparency, which allows edges to be smoothed with anti-aliasing using partial transparency. With GIF, edges smoothed with anti-aliasing have to be blended with an assumed background color. If anti-aliased GIF images are displayed against a different background color, then you get a "halo" effect with a faint outline of the assumed background color.

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7 hours ago, niraD said:
10 hours ago, rustynails. said:

Could they upconvert it? Why convert in the first place? If it was working why mess with it? 

There are things that PNG can do that GIF cannot (and vice versa).

 

If they need a PNG, then they could just call it what it is, e.g. the icons above the logs summarising the number of found/DNF/Note/NA/etc. logs are PNG and named as such, or is there some advantage for calling it a GIF when it isn't?

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7 hours ago, MartyBartfast said:

If they need a PNG, then they could just call it what it is, e.g. the icons above the logs summarising the number of found/DNF/Note/NA/etc. logs are PNG and named as such, or is there some advantage for calling it a GIF when it isn't?

 

Oh, absolutely. They shouldn't advertise it as a GIF when it's really a PNG.

 

But for what it's worth, what matters is the Content-Type header sent by the server, not the filename. Right now, they're sending it as "Content-Type: image/gif" , which is wrong. If they sent it as "Content-Type: image/png" , then that would be correct (as far as the web is concerned), no matter what the filename.

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On ‎12‎/‎13‎/‎2019 at 4:18 PM, kunarion said:


Install most any browser such as Firefox or Chrome and it will ask if you want to import Favorites.  Edge can do that, too.

 

I tried installing firefox and selected import favorites but that didn't happen.  To much BS and trying to get me phone apps not user friendly. Just wanted the browser and favorites/bookmarks. Ended up having to use their help page to import favorites. I knew it wouldn't be easy.

 

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On ‎12‎/‎13‎/‎2019 at 10:09 AM, kunarion said:

It cannot be any of those reasons, because other site GIF images load just fine in IE11, such as this one:  2.gif

https://www.geocaching.com/images/WptTypes/sm/2.gif

 

It's the same whether I use the Geocaching.com web page or a direct URL address.  IE11 is old, but that doesn't explain why some icons don't load.

Yeah...

Actually found a cache today, and my log has the smiley ":)" show as the black box, but the  ":D" shows up fine.   Weird...

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6 hours ago, rustynails. said:

 

I tried installing firefox and selected import favorites but that didn't happen.  To much BS and trying to get me phone apps not user friendly. Just wanted the browser and favorites/bookmarks. Ended up having to use their help page to import favorites. I knew it wouldn't be easy.

 

 

Yeah.  Switching to a "recommended" web browser merely because the old one isn't supported anymore is a real pain.  I installed Brave this week (a port of FF), and worked for a while to get all the settings kind of like how I had IE set up (home page, page zoom, search engine, etc.).  What a chore.  I also tried to "Import Bookmarks" from Edge, and after waiting a couple minutes, no bookmarks.  I then tried it "from IE", and that produces the usual "Imported Bookmarks" sub-section.  That part actually is fine with me, because now I can select some bookmarks I actually use, and have those in view, and the mass of old ones in their own area in  case I need one.

 

"A modern browser" is cool and all.  What I can't figure out is why the interface needs to be alien.  All the actual IE functions are still there, some now a click or two into a menu item named differently.  OK, sure, when I switch software I'm also required to enjoy its whole new menu experience.  But still.

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1 hour ago, Keystone said:

As this thread has changed purpose from a possible bug report to a helpful discussion on upgrading to a modern browser, I have moved the topic from the Geocaching.com Website Bugs and Feature Requests forum.

 

That's suitable.  It's not a website bug, it's the obsolete web browser.  Now we have a good excuse to switch to a different one. :cute:

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Just now, kunarion said:

 

That's suitable.  It's not a website bug, it's the obsolete web browser.  Now we have a good excuse to switch to a different one. :cute:

 

Actually it is a website bug if the Content-Type is shown as image/gif but the actual object is a png file. I suspect if that was corrected, IE11 would display the stars.

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16 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

 

Actually it is a website bug if the Content-Type is shown as image/gif but the actual object is a png file. I suspect if that was corrected, IE11 would display the stars.


Sure, but it was a web design decision.  I wouldn’t do it like that.  But I also wouldn’t place gray text on a gray background. Somebody did it because that’s the way they do it.

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2 minutes ago, kunarion said:
22 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

Actually it is a website bug if the Content-Type is shown as image/gif but the actual object is a png file. I suspect if that was corrected, IE11 would display the stars.


Sure, but it was a web design decision.

 

Using PNG instead of GIF is a web design decision.

 

Using PNG but sending it as "Content-Type: image/gif" is a bug.

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29 minutes ago, niraD said:

 

Using PNG instead of GIF is a web design decision.

 

Using PNG but sending it as "Content-Type: image/gif" is a bug.

 

This thread was moved out of the bug Forum for being not a bug. [EDIT: Cool, you made a new thread in there :)]

 

Supporting IE's graphics interpreter might be a "Feature Suggestion".  But we're seeing a whole bunch of web sites warning that IE is not supported, to use a different browser.  None of them are changing their minds.  And if you mean that web designers absolutely must stick to best design practices, don't get me started.  I've been saying that til I'm blue in the nose around here.

 

KnowhatImean?

 

 

Untitled-1.jpg

 

 

Edited by kunarion
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6 minutes ago, kunarion said:

This thread was moved out of the bug Forum for being not a bug.

 

Supporting IE's graphics interpreter might be a "Feature Suggestion".  But we're seeing a whole bunch of web sites warning that IE is not supported, to use a different browser.  None of them are changing their minds.

 

The HTML specification for Object-Type says:

Definition and Usage

The type attribute specifies the Internet media type (formerly known as MIME type) of the object.

 

Saying that an object is of one type when it's actually something else is surely a bug, and the fact that so-called "modern" browsers currently overlook it doesn't make it any less of a bug. I'd go as far as saying that permitting this violation is a bug in those "modern" browsers.

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5 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

 

The HTML specification for Object-Type says:

Definition and Usage

The type attribute specifies the Internet media type (formerly known as MIME type) of the object.

 

Saying that an object is of one type when it's actually something else is surely a bug, and the fact that so-called "modern" browsers currently overlook it doesn't make it any less of a bug. I'd go as far as saying that permitting this violation is a bug in those "modern" browsers.

 

Cool.  Post that in the bug Forum. :cute:

 

 

Edited by kunarion
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