Discourse is not working on Firefox 51

Support Blender Artists Website Support
1

my main browser is a non-chromium browser. I use Firefox 51.0 for most browsing because it was the last version where turning off auto-updates actually meant you could not be forced to update.

I tried a private browser window, it’s the same, just the background color and the same errors. I have to use seamonkey to get on here. and I don’t like using it for security issues. (I.E. google spyware incorporated) there are very few important sites that conform to googletml. especially seeing as newer browsers can all view old html pages. updating just pushes users to install spyware and legitimates google’s monopolization of the internet.

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thats with javascript

this is with no javascript:

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seems like the site can function without some of those neosyntax javascripts, just looks like the logic form is only in neojs/chrometml.

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That’s a very old browser, and it’s likely that Discourse is no longer supporting that. If you have issues in the latest version I can help, but with this you’re on your own, sorry.

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so you actively encourage users to install spyware browsers? literally since google rewrote html they forced all other browser makers to incorporate google spyware code just to have permission to read their new fangled html.

I have to use a new browser for work, but I keep that thing off my dev computer cause I caught it sneaking a screengrab of other applications when I switch between them or type a lot, also caught it keylogging and mouse pointer monitoring. it then attempts to upload this information to any of google’s servers it can (saw this in resource monitor). I had to block a wide range of IP addresses belonging to google.com in the firewall but even then it still gets through occasionally on the seemingly thousands of IP addresses they create every day. It’s even worse that google does this for financial gain, and that they share sensitive info with random companies (the highest bidders) who then resell the info to scammers. It’s a legitimate security concern and website owners should not be encouraging it. It could lead to legal liability. - you force users to use spyware to visit your site, they get money stolen or their identity stolen or get hacked, not a good combo if they say “I only use this software to access blenderartists.org”.

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Yeah I’m not going to have that discussion with you. Discourse only supports modern browsers, nothing I can change about that.

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Use a different backwards compatible forum package? I’m honestly not your enemy here.

I’ve seen this one replace Discourse on other forums for this very reason.

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I have noticed the site being down for short periods. I do not know for it is due to the staff being so insistent on keeping up with the latest Discourse commits that beta versions are used (without checking to see if there were serious regressions reported by others first).

Since there is currently no alternative English community competing with BA, the rapid-fire updating seems to be a bit careless (disclaimer; I use dev. builds of Blender and Godot, but in my case I have the option to return to an older build with little disruption if a serious regression is present).

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I carefully test on a staging server before updating, but the current issues are caused by high load, which I can’t test there :man_shrugging:

Also, if we had more Patreons we could invest in hiring some tech support. BA is operating on a shoe-string budget - it’s easy to say ‘this is how you should do it’ or ‘this is how my enterprise business does it’, but over here it’s just me…

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you have a lot of volunteers here. many of us know HTML, PHP and javascript in addition to python and blender. Might I suggest you take the cheap/free route and ask your users to volunteer some time to the site?

heck with the amount of users we have here, we could probably build and maintain our own forum software, or at least put together a team to use something that requires less update headaches as listed above.

Transferring current user databases would probably be the only challenge as I’m not sure what database format they are kept in. But I’m certain with the people here it can be accomplished with no data losses.

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I have moved this part of the conversation to its own topic as it was not relevant to the original.

@joshex Feel free to kick off your own new forum software! This is a monumental task, I’d rather invest my energy into community building here instead.

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I’m learning. been messing around with chat boxes recently. the only problem is hosting. neocities does not allow action pages (at least in the free version). forums are not too much different, I do know some other people who do this as well, usually with PHPBB. it’s all just data-handling and secure encryption of databases, that and frames, tables and forms.

but you are right it’s a big project. I would need other people with similar knowledge to aide such a project. Doing things alone is a slow crawl.

As for transferring to what was it called… “simple machines forum”, I guess I could be bothered to ask there how they would suggest going about this. it is helpful that they already have a complete forum. I could also ask the hosts of the other forum for input and post the outcome of this research here. bookmarked

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Oh, but we won’t be migrating to other software. That’s definitely not on the table. If you feel that strongly about things that’s great, but you can start your own project :slight_smile:

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When you say that it’s not on the table, I do have to ask “Why?” shouldn’t you do what’s more accessible for all possible users and easier on yourself? what is so special about discourse? I’m using it here and there’s really nothing special about it, it’s just a reskin of every other forum software with real-time frame updating…

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You’re asking the wrong question: it’s ‘why should we?’ I don’t think this conversation will be productive; you know my point of view: we’re not going to migrate to something new because one user has an opinion. Feel free to launch your own, perfect, Blender forum!

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Hosting a forum as large as BA isn’t cheap though. The cost will be high even if you built your own server farm for the purpose of not being shackled to the California tech. companies (as even the staff will note that securing funds is not exactly an easy task).

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@joshex While I sympathize with where you’re coming from, please understand that the choice of forum software that we made was heavily measured and considered with a variety of factors which include everything from user experience, backend maintenance, moderation tools, and—yes—privacy. We actually migrated away from older-style forum software like Simple Machines and PHPBB (we were using Vbulletin, which is in the same flavor as those two).

This is a large community and the other software packages are simply insufficient in terms of features and support for maintaining a community of this size with the meager budget that we have. Discourse really is the the best option for us.

So at this point, you have the following options:

  • Become a contributor to the Discourse project and provide patches that give support to your preferred browser.

  • Choose a different browser. You mentioned at the start that Firefox 51 was the last one that forced updates. I run Firefox 88 on my Linux workstation and I only update it when I want to. And there are quite a few high-quality, modern, privacy-focused browsers available. Furthermore, if you’re using a different operating system and you still have the privacy concerns you’ve listed, I might suggest you investigate another OS.

  • Maybe this forum isn’t for you. The art and support that people share here is certainly helpful, though, and there are ways—albeit inconvenient ones—to access that content statically. For instance, multiple search engines (including archive.org) cache the content of this site and you can make use of those caches. You miss out on interaction and cached data isn’t as timely as actually being here, but you can still take advantage of the community if you’d like. Of course, we’d certainly prefer that you use the site directly.

I’m sure there are other options available that I haven’t thought of, but those are the ones that most readily spring to mind.

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because
1: there are numerous errors in the newest version.
2: you are splitting an already segmented community by those who want to update and those who don’t want to.
3: and Discourse keep forcing you to waste time and energy updating to their newest fad version or they threaten to disable the site…

I mean I’m certain there are other users who tried to login recently and could not load it and just assumed the page was broken and would be fixed later.

I’ve seen this sort of behavior before over at invisionfree right before they cancelled free forum hosting and tried to demand expensive hosting fees to continue using the site at all.

and Ace, I know hosts that go as low as $5 a month. It really can be worth shopping around sometimes. think, “outside the USA” of course I wouldn’t build my own server farm when there are so many already available to chose from.

let me go ask, for the reasons of the other forum exactly and how much it’s costing them to have migrated to the proposed forum system rather than continue to argue with no verified information.

Update: according to them; “Our Docker installation kept crashing on us and was proving too much to handle to update. We ended switching to SMF instead because of stability and other features.”

Fweeb, does firefox 88 support flashplayer? that was another issue for a lot of people. And yeah linux is different, used to use that but switched to windows for gaming because Wine was lacking in 2007. Last time I checked, Firefox 52 when installed offline from the full installer even when rejecting Mozilla maintenance service and turning off all updates for any reason, automatically phones home to mozilla and downloads the update to the newest version on internet connection, next time you close it BAM it’s 30+ versions newer… plus it disabled my adblocker, download manager and a variety of other addons and would not let me reinstall them. that’s a definite red card in my book. I had tried installing new versions of those addons, only to have them be greyed out and not functional or have the browser allow website’s javascripts to disable adblocking addons… not to mention 89 is the newest and 88 is only 1 moderate release behind. they typically force updates when they feel there is a significant issue that needs to be addressed (like killing adblockers to get money from advertising companies, or killing flash because google said it was a security risk, and acted like javascript (the replacement) wasn’t even though we were told by the federal government to disable javascript years ago because it was completely unsafe because it was Sold by Sun Microsystem to a group of well-known hackers.) so I doubt they have a new issue they need to tackle between 88 and 89. Go ahead, I implore you try to wait till Firefox 100 before updating, I would find it hard to imagine that they would let you.

So I find it odd that you believe you have a choice, but I’m not mocking you here, I’m merely illustrating a point. have you checked the IP addresses the browser communicates with on startup or during use? have you run a python server to listen to those ports to see what information is sent and received?

It’s worth looking into other options. especially easier to manage, backwards compatible options.

One final note, when google and other large companies say “security”. they mean their company’s “financial security” generated by spyware. not your security as a user. I have not used Firefox on linux in ages, but I’d be very surprised if it was dramatically different from the windows version in user security.

Regardless the main point is that there are problems with the forum software for some users. I can’t believe I’d be the only one. but the others may not be able to get back on to report it and voice their opinions. that’s kinda mean.

I’ve been using blender since 2006, I use it for itself, not as some tool to export to other software, but as a game engine and animation software itself. This forum is about blender 3D, not Discourse or any other forum package. I realize it’s hard to migrate, I realize it’d take work, but any company that forces updates down your throat like Discourse cannot be trusted. I hope you see that sooner rather than later.

again invisionfree did the same thing right before locking out forum owners and demanding money just to get access to your old site to migrate the databases. that would be awful here, so many years of posts lost just because of a corporatist company that got too bloated. The fact I even have to argue here says more than enough. The fact that this isn’t just opinion but supported by factual events, says volumes.

If you need a cheap forum host with enough bandwidth and storage there are options outside america.

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There’s a lot to unpack here. I’m just going to put a set of bullets:

  • If you have concerns about security and privacy, but are still using Windows, then you’re already in a problematic situation, regardless of how you interact with the web.

  • Discourse doesn’t force anyone to do anything. When you self-host, it’s like any other software package. Upgrades are in an inevitable part of the process. You started with Blender in 2006. That’s great. Are you still using Blender 2.4x?

  • Shared hosting plans (those are the ones at the rates you’re talking about) are entirely insufficient for meeting the needs of this community. Bart’s been running this site very well for a couple years now and I’ve been involved as a moderator for longer than that… and a community member even longer. Perhaps it’s worthwhile to assume that we’re not new to this.

  • This forum isn’t hosted in the US.

  • I encourage you to become more familiar with how open source works. Discourse is open source software released under the GPL. It can be forked, self-hosted, modified, and maintained independent of any company or organization. Your mistrust is misguided.

  • Echoing my previous post, it’s entirely possible that this forum isn’t for you. You have options available to you. We’ve made numerous decisions about this forum (including the software running on the back end) in an effort try to best serve the needs of this community. Judging from the continued growth of the forum, I’d like to think we’re doing a pretty decent job. Of course, we’re not going to make everyone happy. Maybe you’re one of those people that we aren’t able to help. That’s disappointing… but there’s not much we can do without adversely affecting the experience of everyone else.

We appreciate your understanding in this matter. But there’s really not much more that can be said. We simply don’t have the bandwidth to either switch to an inferior forum software or to maintain a fork of Discourse with an assortment of patches to support a very old browser on based on dubious and cherrypicked claims of privacy loss. Of course, because Discourse is open source, you’re welcome to write those patches yourself and send them upstream to the Discourse development team. If they’re merged in, then you enjoy the benefits of that work on this forum when we next upgrade.

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a lot of times doing a user agent spoofer will fix bs that websites try and pull.

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Yes, actually. I am still using 2.49b, regularly. it’s still a really great piece of software with it’s own benefits that new blender dropped or made harder to use. not to say I don’t use 2.79 here and there. but I’m waiting on a higher version than that with a GE before I go any further.

my point is, I would be happy to organize a team here on blender artists to do just that, to maintain a fork for legacy browsers. from what I see it seems to be a formatting issue because of iframes to support mobile screens, and the “grid” component. there were a few other errors there but those seemed to be the core display issues. But you both have stated in a very jerkish way, that even if such changes were made, you will not be applying them, or am I misunderstanding?

In the old days we had frameset and noframes as an argument in frameset to support old browsers. but iframe’s grid does not have a nogrid table feature. it’s made to be nasty and not allow if statements to support old browsers. it’d have to be a simple javascript to check “try” to make the declaration for grid, and if theres an exception load a separate html doc with the frame based fork. that’s as simple as I can make this for you without going into pages of critique.

Windows can be secure because 1: I don’t use win 10, I use 7. 2: I maintain a large custom firewall to block spyware as often as I can observe it happening.

This forum is and was for me. but the forum software does not support me. It’s like I’m a Zelda or Mario game but when put into a nintendo system I seem to be getting an incorrect format error triggering the copyright protections. just because someone behind the system doesn’t want that software run any more. You must be able to see how jerkish that is.

Companies who do that tend to fail or fall out of favour. like when microsoftie tried to force win 7 users to upgrade to 10 then discontinued support for 7 when that failed. we went OEM 7 or Linux. I honestly still think they are shy of 1 million real users if you drop the university computers and other public venues. and they did that to themselves. by being upgrade jerks. This is just one example.

So the question is, If the users here got a team together to make a backwards compatible version of the Discourse forums (which would take no maintenance, as I doubt there will be changes or updates to deprecated code!) would you be willing to apply it?

Might I add on that note, that I have already contacted discourse and they do not have contact options for non-customers. so they will not be accepting a fork regardless if it were made. they’d auto reject it in a jerkish tone of “you are not a paying customer so buger off, and we don’t agree with this because we are supporting communist style upgrade or die philosophy so why would we enable a workaround?”.

Also I tried a user agent spoofer, it just that the grid code is not understood anda few other custom declarations are being dropped because they are not defined. I mean seriously? what browser would have a specific code word for every single fringe software package on the net? Discourse as a inherent non imported codeword? seriously? who do they think they are?

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I’ll only respond to this:

Again, I encourage to you familiarize yourself with how open source works. The Discourse team is very welcome to source contributions. They have this to say on their GitHub page:

I look forward to seeing your code contributions to that project.

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