NY Times main page missing details

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dryeburn
Posts: 83
Joined: September 17th, 2005, 1:53 pm

NY Times main page missing details

Post by dryeburn »

If I go to the main page of the NY Times <http://www.nytimes.com/> it loads but then almost immediately most of the top portion disappears. (For a fraction of a second before it disappears I can see everything I would expect to see.) This is a new development; it did not happen this morning.

To try to diagnose what's wrong I did the following, without any success:
(1) Unchecked "Ask me before accepting each cookie" (Accept cookies from any site is checked.)
(2) Unchecked "Prevent sites from changing, moving or resizing windows", "Block web advertising", "Block Flash animations", and "Block pop-up windows", all of which are normally checked. Javascript is normally enabled, Java is not normally enabled and I did not enable it, and "Play animated images only once" is not normally checked.
(3) Threw away my entire Camino folder at file://localhost/Users/David/Library/Ap ... rt/Camino/ except for the bookmarks file which I saved elsewhere and then later restored. I let Camino create an entire new such folder.
(4) As a last resort when all this failed I tried using User Agent to pretend to be Firefox; that didn't work either.

I've now undone all the things done in (1) through (4) except that the Camino folder in Application Support is mostly new.

I rebooted on a separate Repair partition which most frequently gets used so that I can do some useful things while doing my regular nightly backup of the main partition; its other purpose is to run DiskWarrior efficiently when needed (which is seldom). The same version of Camino is installed there and the Repair partition is pretty much like the main partition, except smaller and almost all applications are missing. Last night while backing up, Camino behaved normally there, just as Camino did on the main partition this morning. Now it misbehaves in exactly the same way. I did not do (1) through (4) with the Repair partition.

If I check the NY Times main page with Firefox 8.0.1, SeaMonkey 2.4.1, iCab 5.0 beta 106, or Safari 5.1.1 it behaves normally, just as it did this morning with Camino.

Screen shots of the top portion of the NY Times main page, and of the portion next down, are at
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5565238/Top.png>
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5565238/Below%20top.png>

I haven't seen this sort of misbehavior at any other websites.
David
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cflawson
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Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by cflawson »

If you make the window about 50-100 pixels wider, does the problem go away? (I can't tell if it's full-width now, but it looks like it isn't, or even close.)

cl
dryeburn
Posts: 83
Joined: September 17th, 2005, 1:53 pm

Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by dryeburn »

cflawson wrote:If you make the window about 50-100 pixels wider, does the problem go away? (I can't tell if it's full-width now, but it looks like it isn't, or even close.)

cl

Nope.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5565238/Full%20width.png>
David
dryeburn
Posts: 83
Joined: September 17th, 2005, 1:53 pm

Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by dryeburn »

Two (correction, three) more observations.

(1) I fired up our MacBook, also running Mac OS 10.6.8 like my iMac, but with Camino 2.1RC2 (1.9.2.24 20111103201058) installed. Same thing happened.
(2) I downloaded the latest version (1.9.2.25pre 20111120002352), installed it on this 2010 27 inch iMac, and the same thing is happening.

Maybe the NY Times no longer likes Canadians who use Camino?

OK, before posting this I went across the room and checked my wife's 2005 G5 iMac (Mac OS 10.4.11) which is running the same version of Camino as on the MacBook. Same thing happened. And I had gone to the NY Times website this morning with her computer (before I turned mine on) and it behaved normally then.
David
dryeburn
Posts: 83
Joined: September 17th, 2005, 1:53 pm

Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by dryeburn »

The problem has disappeared (at least for now). I didn't check the MacBook but my wife's G5 iMac and my Intel iMac, with somewhat different versions of Camino and radically different operating systems now show normal behavior. All this leaves unanswered several questions: Why did it happen? Why didn't it affect other web browsers? Presumably no one else observed it; why not?

See <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5565238/Problem%20has%20disappeared.png>
David
phiw13
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Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by phiw13 »

A wild guess:
* an advertisement that (accidentally) inserted some code that it shouldn't have
* a slight error in the html code produced by one or other article
(ok, that is 2 wild guesses… the second one is more plausible)

In both cases the parser used by WebKit or firefox 4+ swallowed it – or auto-corrected it, whereas Camino's html parser created some mess. You didn't pay attention if the page was absolutely identical (content wis, except for the gap) between the non-working version and the working version, did you? It could be that one or other article got updated or removed from the front page.
dryeburn
Posts: 83
Joined: September 17th, 2005, 1:53 pm

Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by dryeburn »

phiw13 wrote:A wild guess:
* an advertisement that (accidentally) inserted some code that it shouldn't have
* a slight error in the html code produced by one or other article
(ok, that is 2 wild guesses… the second one is more plausible)

In both cases the parser used by WebKit or firefox 4+ swallowed it – or auto-corrected it, whereas Camino's html parser created some mess. You didn't pay attention if the page was absolutely identical (content wis, except for the gap) between the non-working version and the working version, did you? It could be that one or other article got updated or removed from the front page.


I didn't check that, but I'd bet a good bit of money that lots of things changed frequently, and that some one thing stayed the same for as many hours as the problem persisted. That's the way the main page at the NY Times is. I don't think your second guess is wild at all. The only thing that puzzles me is why no one else here noticed it.
David
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cflawson
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Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by cflawson »

Maybe they're serving different content to Canada, and not a lot of Canadians visit the NYT (and therefore it took them a while to notice the problem and fix it)?
fyreflye
Posts: 25
Joined: August 31st, 2011, 4:56 pm

Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by fyreflye »

I encounter this problem occasionally on a number of web sites (MacUpdate, for instance) but it's usually gone the next time I open the page. Camino isn't the only browser this happens with, though it's more likely to appear on betas. I've decided that for whatever reason it's caused by the web sites, not my computer.
herbs
Posts: 568
Joined: November 22nd, 2003, 8:39 pm

Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by herbs »

Howdy,

I saw the same problem with the NYT site on that day. The same thing happened in Safari. It's now fine.
Good Luck,
Herb Schulz
dryeburn
Posts: 83
Joined: September 17th, 2005, 1:53 pm

Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by dryeburn »

herbs wrote:Howdy,

I saw the same problem with the NYT site on that day. The same thing happened in Safari. It's now fine.

That's interesting. Safari worked fine for me that day (well, it worked as well as Safari usually works :( ). What part of the world are you in? I'm in a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
David
herbs
Posts: 568
Joined: November 22nd, 2003, 8:39 pm

Re: NY Times main page missing details

Post by herbs »

dryeburn wrote:
herbs wrote:Howdy,

I saw the same problem with the NYT site on that day. The same thing happened in Safari. It's now fine.

That's interesting. Safari worked fine for me that day (well, it worked as well as Safari usually works :( ). What part of the world are you in? I'm in a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Howdy,

I'm in a suburb of Chicago, IL, USA.
Good Luck,
Herb Schulz
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