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  • #918

Closed
Open
Opened 10 months ago by Danyl Strype@strypey
Report abuse New issue

(feat): Support for Trisquel/ABrowser

Summary

I assume the Minds page layout isn't rendering properly in my browser, as it looks really weird, and as a result the UI is really hard to navigate and use. If you look at the attached screenshot, you'll see I'm trying to post a comment, but the 'send' button has disappeared into the void.

Steps to reproduce

Install the GNU/Linux I'm using in a VM, open the default browser, navigate to Minds.com, login.

Platform information

  • Device: Acer Aspire One netbook, 32-bit (full specs here: https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/bishop)
  • OS: Trisquel GNU/Linux 8 (Flidas)
  • Browser: ABrowser 66.02 (default browser, basically Firefox without all the proprietary bits and with all the privacy and anti-tracker protection hardened).
  • Add-ons:
  • standard ABrowser variations from vanilla Firefox
  • NoScript 10.6rc1 (minds.com set to "trusted)
  • uBlock Origin 1.18.14 (turned off for minds.com)

Screenshot_at_2019-04-01_23_46_45

Edited 9 months ago by Ben Hayward

Linked issues
0

  • Discussion 25
  • Designs 0
  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben added Type::Bug (Triage) scoped label 10 months ago

    added scoped label

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben added 1 deleted label 10 months ago

    added 1 deleted label

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 10 months ago
    Developer

    Hey man, did you figure these issues out? I think I remember seeing @luculent helping you on the H&S group yesterday so just wanted to check.

    I'm running on Manjaro and I can say Firefox works fine - had not heard about ABrowser so may have a look into that. Do you find many errors like this?

  • Danyl Strype
    Danyl Strype @strypey · 10 months ago

    Hey man, did you figure these issues out? I think I remember seeing @luculent helping you on the H&S group yesterday so just wanted to check.

    Nope, not me. Which suggests there may be more than one person striking these issues.

    Do you find many errors like this?

    Only on one or two sites. Most sites render fine.

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 10 months ago
    Developer

    Ah my apologies I was thinking of this issue: https://www.minds.com/media/959348240931708928

    I tried on the latest abrowser in the AUR and the site works fine - assuming you're up to date I think we can rule the browser out as the cause. Are you able to attach the XHR logs or just a screenshot of anything failed in the network tab of your dev console?

  • Luculent
    Luculent @luculent · 10 months ago

    @strypey Are you by chance using the LibreJS browser extension on your installation of Abrowser? If so, could you please disable it, or white-list Minds and see if that makes any difference?

    Something of a long-shot...but just a thought.

  • Danyl Strype
    Danyl Strype @strypey · 10 months ago

    Nope. Only the NoScript and uBlock add-ons mentioned in the bug report.

    FWIW Minds is 100% free code (yes?), so it ought to be possible to make it fully compatible with LibreJS. If you're struggling with that, I may be able to put you in touch with folks who can help.

  • Danyl Strype
    Danyl Strype @strypey · 10 months ago

    @benhayward.ben

    assuming you're up to date I think we can rule the browser out as the cause.

    Ae, up-to-date, and the problem has persisted through a number of updates. Sorry for not reporting it earlier.

    Are you able to attach the XHR logs or just a screenshot of anything failed in the network tab of your dev console?

    Happy to help, but how do I get an export of said XHR logs and the output of the network tab to attach here (spot the noob ;P)? In the meantime, here's a screenshot to give you an idea.minds.com-screenshot-at-2019-04-05-16_54_48

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 10 months ago
    Developer

    Hey,

    This should probably do the trick. https://www.inflectra.com/support/knowledgebase/kb254.aspx

    Failing that: https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/gather-firefox-console-log/

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben closed 10 months ago

    closed

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben reopened 10 months ago

    reopened

  • Danyl Strype
    Danyl Strype @strypey · 9 months ago

    Thanks for the links @benhayward.ben I'll have a read and get that data to you ASAP. In the meantime though, you asked:

    Do you find many errors like this?

    Another platform where I strike similar display errors is Movim, a social media web app build around XMPP, for example: https://movim.se/

    If you can identify anything Minds and Movim have in common, this might help us triage the problem, and figure out if it's something that needs to be changed at your end, or in Trisquel, or both.

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 9 months ago
    Developer

    It's weird, I've never used Trisquel, looking it up, its Ubuntu based? Have you made sure you're up to date with your browser? Does it happen if you try on another browser?

    Perhaps this may help but its very outdated https://superuser.com/questions/547115/firefox-displays-weird-encoding-icons-on-websites-like-github

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 9 months ago
    Developer

    I know atleast one of our devs runs the site fine on Ubuntu, I know of other users on Debian and I'm on Manjaro. So long as Trisquel is not doing some crazy stuff that I've overlooked, I'd expect that should work too.

    Possibly this too https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/36291/why-do-some-characters-show-as-squares-in-chrome

    Also make sure your cache and cookies are clear - never hurts.

  • Luculent
    Luculent @luculent · 9 months ago

    I dont think this is anything OS specific. I run Minds on Debian through Firefox, and have no issues what so ever.

    We are looking at a problem with ABrowser. Im going to suggest its a bit more than just ' basically Firefox without all the proprietary bits and with all the privacy and anti-tracker protection hardened'.

    I have been unable however to obtain a copy of ABrowser...so for me, this has become impossible to troubleshoot.

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 9 months ago
    Developer

    Yeah I don't think its related to OS or ABrowser either. For reference here is ABrowser on Minds for me. abrowser

    @strypey Could you send me the output of the network tab on load. On ABrowser for me it's ctrl + shift + c to open the dev tools, click the network tab, reload then when you've got the output, right click in the network tab and save all as HAR, then you can upload that here, or email me at ben@minds.com.

    If you know what you're doing already or see anything of interest, just let me know that instead of the HAR file.

  • Luculent
    Luculent @luculent · 9 months ago

    Okay then...I just cant stand this one anymore...I'm loading up a copy of Trisquel before I go mad :P

  • Luculent
    Luculent @luculent · 9 months ago

    Sorry...I just cant reproduce this one, and not for lack of trying. I did load Trisquel.

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 9 months ago
    Developer

    Thanks for trying that @luculent , I hadn't found the time.

    My suspicion is that one of the scripts is not loading for some reason... It looks kind of similar to when the site is half built locally and you try to run it early.

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben removed 1 deleted label 9 months ago

    removed 1 deleted label

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben added 1 deleted label 9 months ago

    added 1 deleted label

  • Danyl Strype
    Danyl Strype @strypey · 9 months ago

    Thanks to you both for you efforts on this. Here's the HAR file you asked for, sorry this took so long. Archive_19-04-19_19-35-42.har

    @luculent

    I just cant reproduce this one, and not for lack of trying. I did load Trisquel.

    Could my system being 32-bit have something to do with it?

    @benhayward.ben

    My suspicion is that one of the scripts is not loading for some reason

    Some kind of conflict with NoScript? Even when I click 'disable restrictions for this tab' the problem persists, but it could be a bug in that add-on. Or could it be to do with third-party script blockers built into ABrowser? Some interaction between that and NS? Just spitballing here ;)

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 9 months ago
    Developer

    Nothing too much of use in there. One failing request to our sockets but that wouldn't cause this, it'd just stop your notifications and messages from coming in instantly.

    I'd have to assume that its some problem with a script blocker, if it operates after the request comes in.

  • Danyl Strype
    Danyl Strype @strypey · 9 months ago

    Ben Hayward wrote:

    I'd have to assume that its some problem with a script blocker, if it operates after the request comes in.

    OK. So it could be an issue with NoScript. It could also be the built-in third-party script blocker, which seems to be causing problems with Wire, as discussed here: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/wire-no-longer-working-32-bit-abrowser-trisquel

    I could file bug reports with both ABrowser and NoScript. But before I do, can you suggest any way to triage further, to see if we can identify with some certainty whether or not either of these are the culprit?

  • Danyl Strype
    Danyl Strype @strypey · 9 months ago

    I tried turning off Content Protection in the browser. Didn't seem to help. Here's a screenshot. minds_screenshot-abrowser_on_32-bit_trisquel-2019-04-21

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 9 months ago
    Developer

    I have no idea as I'm not familiar with the browser unfortunately. That being said to troubleshoot I would try and see whether you can turn off the 3rd party ad block and scripting, and try again.

  • Luculent
    Luculent @luculent · 9 months ago

    I would suggest trying this situation out using firefox, and see if it displays the same.

    Its very strange to me that I did not get this when using Trisquel and its preferred browser.

    Should it turn out that It does not display the same for you using Ffox, then I would suggest that Abrowser is not compatible with Minds, and this might be turned into a feature request rather than a bug report.

    the whole thing is just wierd....and nagging!

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben removed 1 deleted label 9 months ago

    removed 1 deleted label

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben removed Type::Bug (Triage) label 9 months ago

    removed label

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben changed title from Minds page layout not rendering properly in my browser to (feat): Support for Trisquel/ABrowser 9 months ago

    changed title from rowser to rowser

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben added Priority::3 - Nice to have Type::Feature scoped labels 9 months ago

    added scoped labels

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben removed Priority::3 - Nice to have Type::Feature labels 9 months ago

    removed labels

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben added Triage::Unable to Replicate Type::Bug (Triage) scoped labels 9 months ago

    added scoped labels

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 9 months ago
    Developer

    It's annoying because we can't even turn it into a feat request until we have a way to replicate the issue on our end. I've dropped it into unable to replicate until we figure something out.

  • Danyl Strype
    Danyl Strype @strypey · 9 months ago

    TL;DR GIGO (user error). ABrowser had been set to refuse website-supplied fonts.

    I cracked it! I installed IceCat (52.3.0 32-bit), another libre Firefox fork, but based off the ESR release of FF, rather than the current version (which ABrowser is). Minds.com renders fine on this. Hmm.

    Before I tested, I turned off anything on the IceCat start page that I thought might cause issues (LibreJS etc). So I decided to turn things on, one by one, and see if I could reproduce the problem. I selected "use system fonts" and reloaded Minds.com, and voila! Suddenly it looked like it does in ABrowser and I vagueley remembered choosing an option like that when tweaking ABrowser in the past.

    I couldn't find that checkbox in ABrowser, but under:

    menu > preferences > general > languages and appearance > fonts & colors > advanced

    ... I found a checkbox that says:

    Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above

    I checked that box, and now everything looks fine :}

    So sorry for wasting so much of your time on this! Thanks so much for your diligence though and your welcoming approach to exploring my funky edge case :) If it makes you feel any better, it's definitely left me with a positive impression of the Minds team. I'll feel confident to report any other issues I might have with the site and encourage others to do the same.

  • Danyl Strype
    Danyl Strype @strypey · 9 months ago

    Now a #UX suggestion: is there a way to detect that browser setting? If so, you could have the site pop-up a message when it's detected, saying something like: "if your page layout looks a little funky, you might need to check your browser settings and make sure websites can choose their own fonts"

  • Ben Hayward
    Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben · 9 months ago
    Developer

    So sorry for wasting so much of your time on this!

    No worry, I got to learn a little about Trisquel and ABrowser.

    I'll feel confident to report any other issues I might have with the site and encourage others to do the same.

    Much appreciated! I think perhaps the time investment for that would be too high, unless it was affecting even more users. This being said, I think that we should have a section on the new Helpdesk for it. I'll drop a todo on this issue and pass something through to one of the site admins to add.

  • Danyl Strype @strypey mentioned in issue fediverse/fediverse.gitlab.io#38 (closed) 8 months ago

    mentioned in issue fediverse/fediverse.gitlab.io#38 (closed)

  • Ben Hayward @benhayward.ben closed 1 hour ago

    closed

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Reference: minds/front#918