Story formatting bug with missing centered copy is browser-dependent.

[MrPixel]

The previously reported recent problem with missing centered copy is still a problem.

However, it depends on browser. I tested three: Firefox displays correctly. DuckDuckGo and Vivaldi randomly do not display centered text beyond Page 1.

This is beyond annoying. I rely on centered "=====" for scene breaks. Without these, the scenes run together into a word soup. Other authors have mentioned this problem, yet it persists. Take a look at Barstow - What the Future Holds as a recent upload that displays this.

Please fix, and please test with multiple browsers.

Thank you!

 

[onehitwanda]

This is an ongoing issue with both new and historic stories. Centered section breaks render on the first page, but then will often fail to render on the second and subsequent pages unless you manually refresh the page.

@Manu this adversely affects reader experience and is infuriating as a writer. Please!

 

[Bamagan]

I can confirm that the bug appears in the Brave browser as well. The same glitch as wanda mentioned above, with the section breaks missing until or unless manually refreshed on any page after the first.

 

[onehitwanda]

I can reproduce this bug on:

Microsoft Edge on windows 10
Firefox 145 on windows 10
Firefox on iOS 18.7.2

interestingly enough, the bug does NOT appear on Firefox 146.0.1 on mac. I tested by upgrading to 146.0.1 on my windows machine and the bug hasn't occurred yet.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Also, let's please put things in the proper context. I'm happy people use alternative browsers. It shows we think outside of the box. But the reality of what users worldwide use to browse the web is:



It's not about how many browsers incorrectly display the text; it's about which ones do and which don't.

I can confirm that Chrome doesn't display the section breaks properly. It only does so after a page reload. And that in itself is a catastrophe.

 

[onehitwanda]

Scratch that, it just reoccurred on Firefox 146.0.1 on windows.

 

[onehitwanda]

Doesn't appear on the latest version of Chrome on windows - yet.

 

[onehitwanda]

So it appears to be a general bug, not related to Chromium if firefox is also doing it. Edge uses Chromium so if Chrome's doing it I'd expect Edge (and all other Chromium browsers) to do it.

Seems to put it firmly into the CSS / java script (fuck you censor imp) domain, but there are no errors showing in the developer consoles.

(This, incidentally, is why I am also a die-hard believer in server-side rendering of webpage content)

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Doesn't appear on the latest version of Chrome on windows - yet.

Didn't check today, but the bug did appear on Windows, Version 143.0.7499.170 Chrome a day or two ago.

 

[onehitwanda]

My inner SRE is screaming like a chimp on epinephrine, bending cage bars, and desperate to create a status page.

 

[SugarStorm]

My inner SRE is screaming like a chimp on epinephrine, bending cage bars, and desperate to create a status page.

Where would the fun in that be? It’s far more interactive discovering these little challenges ourselves. I, for one, quite enjoy the smorgasbord of gremlins the site is currently offering.

 

[onehitwanda]

Where would the fun in that be? It’s far more interactive discovering these little challenges ourselves. I, for one, quite enjoy the smorgasbord of gremlins the site is currently offering.

Yes, but you're a Skandie and we (Western Europe) know you guys are oddly into self-abuse, like beating yourselves with birch branches, going swimming in icy waters, and lutefisk, among other things.

Sensible, British ladies like myself like our gremlins skinned, preserved, and pinned to parchment pages in a book for us to look at and go "oh, yes, I remember this little bugger. Took two barrels and a stabbing to end the sod."

Edit: because, so thrrrrpt!

 

[SugarStorm]

Yes, but you're a Skandie and we (Western Europe) know you guys are oddly into self-abuse, like beating yourselves with birch branches, going swimming in icy waters, and lutefisk, among other things.

We may do icy lakes and lutefisk, but you used to swim in the Thames and eat jellied eels. No one here is winning.

It’s been about 1200 years since we last visited you lot. Let’s not repeat that, yes? I’d rather avoid the inevitable complaints when the birch branches come out and we start explaining how things work

 

[onehitwanda]

It’s been about 1200 years since we last visited you lot. Let’s not repeat that, yes? I’d rather avoid the inevitable complaints when the birch branches come out and we start explaining how things work

@PennyThompson ! The book!

 

[MrPixel]

Also, let's please put things in the proper context. I'm happy people use alternative browsers. It shows we think outside of the box. But the reality of what users worldwide use to browse the web is:

Fuck Chrome. It will never touch any system I own or am responsible for.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Fuck Chrome. It will never touch any system I own or am responsible for.

Sure. Just saying that Chrome is far more relevant for this discussion than the alternative browsers that take 1% of the market.

 

[MrPixel]

...manually refresh the page.

Ah. I didn't test that. But I shouldn't have to.

My edu-guess is the styles are being pushed out asynchronously and the body beats them to the punch. I've seen these kind of failures before, and I'll bet that the style controlling text centering is last or near the last of the style block. With @Manu working so hard on site efficiency, I would guess a change to async loading was a go-to in his toolbox.

 

[drusus]

The problem is being caused by the way the story pages are delivered to the browser. The server renders the initial HTML and sends it to the client which builds it into the page that you see on your screen. Part of this process pulls Java Script from the local computer using things called "hydration keys" to attach local JS functions to the data delivered on the page, speeding up delivery and reducing the load on the server.

If you look at the page source, you'll see these used around every paragraph:

<p data-hk=(lots of numbers)>Your story text</p>

This model can go wrong when reading paged content because the hydration keys go out of sync. Reloading the page will reset them and that's when the scene breaks reappear.

They are working fine on most of the content and only cause a problem with the scene break tags. These tags are held in the page as:

<p align="center">=====</p>

Which is a deprecated format in modern web pages. They should be entered as:

<p style="text-align: center;">=====</p>

Changing the alignment format in the HTML might be enough to fix it. Another option would be for the server to force a page reload every time which will reset all the keys in the domain object model and render the page correctly.