tripecac

I just updated NoScript to 1.1.4.7 on another PC and the MCE buttons are working there too. Yay! So, problem solved (hopefully!)

Hi, thanks for the info!

Something weird just happened. When I started up Firefox (with the same tabs as last time, which was a week or so ago), my “Create New Post” page was missing the visual buttons and had javascript errors. This itself wasn’t surprising. Here’s the interesting bit:

After reading the responses to this topic, I decided to check my Firefox Ad-Ons. I ran the updater and saw that there is a new version of NoScript. I updated NoScript (to 1.1.4.7) and restared Firefox…

…and now, the visual buttons are always there. I refreshed 20+ times and they never disappeared. Weird. So maybe NoScript was interfering with the loading of MCE javascript (even though I wasn’t blocking it)? Or maybe my browser is just having a “lucky streak”…

I’ll restart Firefox and try again to see if I can get the MCE buttons to disappear. Unless you hear back from me today, you can assume that I wasn’t able to reproduce the problem anymore.

Even if I have 100% success today, I’ll post another update again here in a few days to let you know if the success rate is still 100%. If so, then maybe the problem was NoScript. Maybe. I’ll keep you posted!

In case you are wondering, WordPress 2.1.3 does not fix the problem. I get the same disappearing visual buttons after upgrading.

Okay, I found the code for adding the mce elements. It’s in wp-includes/js/tinymce/tiny_mce.js. That’s a huge file, with huge functions, and prototyping, which I’ve never used. I think we’ll need someone familiar w/ prototyping if we’re going to try to debug it.

I did a side-by-side comparison of the “bad” page and “good” page using firefox’s DOM inspector. Here’s what I found:

1) The “good” page has 2 extra elements at the very end of the body tag:

<div id="mc_menu_0" class="mceMenu">...</div>
<div id="mc_menu_1" class="mceMenu">...</div>

2) The “good” page has an extra span inside of the last div within #postdivrich:

<span id="mce_editor_0_parent" class="mceEditorContainer">...</span>

There might be other differences, but those are the two ones I noticed.

I guess the next steps are to find out:

1) which javascript is response for adding these elements
2) why that javascript is not getting executed for the “bad” page

I noticed something else this morning while repeatedly refreshing the Create Post page.

Sometimes, the visual buttons are redrawn before the other elements on the page. Sometimes they are redrawn last. Most of the times they never appear (unless I shift-refresh). Shift-refresh is slower, but usually (but not always) results in the buttons being visible; sometimes it acts just like a refresh.

Sometimes the visual buttons are visible immediately after reload, but then they vanish. I click refresh, then the edit box changes to a darker shade of gray, then the buttons disappear and are not redrawn. So, whatever javascript or CSS changes the color of the edit box is executing, but the javascript that’s supposed to add the visual buttons is *not* executing. I haven’t dug through the code to find out which file does what.

Another thing I noticed: I loaded the Create Post page in 2 tabs (in firefox). I then refreshed until one tab was “good” (with visual buttons) and one was “bad”. The html for both tabs was identical except for temp_ID and hh/mm/ss data; this makes sense. None of the javascript includes differed between the “good” and “bad” tabs. So, unless those temporary and time values are making php behave fundamentally differently or the deviations are caused by javascript not running the same each time. I’m thinking the latter.

simsen, are you sure the problem went away permanently?

I just commented the same line, then refreshed my edit page multiple times. Sometimes the visual buttons appeared, sometimes not.

Can you please try refreshing your edit window a bunch of times (say, 10 or 20) with and without that gzip line disabled and less us know if it really did fix the problem 100% for you?

Thanks!

Thanks, guys. I think I know what went wrong.

When I wrote my posts, I was trying to communicate with each of the people who had the problem that I was experiencing (missing visual buttons). I was empathizing with those posters, thinking of how I would feel if someone asked me a follow-up question days, weeks, or months later. Personally, I’m flattered whenever someone “digs up” one of my own posts and asks me a follow-up question. It makes me feel like my efforts to post were worth it (especially if something in one of my posts helps someone else).

However, I was *not* empathizing with the “regulars”, the people who routinely check recent posts and try to help other people with all sorts of problems (e.g., Dr. Mike). To them, my numerous followups (“bumps”) were probably annoying, because there were a lot of them and there wasn’t much variety. Plus, I was effectively re-opening old topics, undoing the work it took to close those topics. So my posts were bound to rub them the wrong way.

I’m sorry for irritating Dr. Mike and the other “regulars” with my “shotgun followup” strategy. I certainly didn’t mean to annoy anyone. My empathy was just somewhere else at the moment (with all the people who had the same problem as me).

I guess this is one of those cases of “can’t please all the people all the time”. At least, not unless you’re brilliant and/or naturally tactful, and I’m definitely neither!

Travis

Interesting. I was actually going through all the posts and saying that sometimes the problem appeared to go away (when you clear your cache)… and I was wondering if the problem had resurfaced for those people who had believed they had “fixed” the problem.

I know from experience that sometimes if I say I “fix” something, it’s embarrassing to come back later and admit that the fix didn’t take. So, I was trying to ask every person who claimed to have found a fix if the fix had been permanent or temporary.

There were a lot of posts about this particular bug, and I was trying to be thorough.

I’m sorry if people interpreted my questions as spam or a waste of time. I’m also sorry that the moderators on here were so quick to judge my intentions negatively.

This experience has given me a very poor impression of the WordPress community. Hopefully not everyone on here is as cynical as “Dr. Mike”.

For me, shift-refresh or ctrl-refresh makes the visual buttons comes back, but only temporarily. If I later refresh normally, the visual buttons usually disappear again.

I’m guessing this has something to do with the way our browsers are caching javascript files. However, I’m really not sure…

diabolik, were you able to fix the problem (or at least find a pleasant workaround)? If so, how?

My guess is that the problem has something to do with the order in which Javascript blocks are being executed. If the one that needs MCE objects and methods is executed before those objects and methods are defined, we get a Javascript error.

Shift-refreshing the browser seems to force the Javascript to run in a specific order (probably because the cache is flushed).

Normal refreshing, however, seems to allow browser caching to interfere with the javascript execution order. I’m guessing that some of the javascript is reloaded and some is cached.

Here’s the Javascript that I see in the head of my [b]Create New Post[/b] page:

<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
function addLoadEvent(func) {if ( typeof wpOnload!='function'){wpOnload=func;}else{ var oldonload=wpOnload;wpOnload=function(){oldonload();func();}}}
//]]>
</script>
<style type="text/css">* html { overflow-x: hidden; }</style>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-includes/js/fat.js?ver=1.0-RC1_3660'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-includes/js/prototype.js?ver=1.5.0'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-includes/js/tw-sack.js?ver=1.6.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-includes/js/autosave-js.php?ver=20070116'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-includes/js/dbx.js?ver=2.05'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-admin/dbx-admin-key-js.php?ver=3651&amp;pagenow=post-new.php'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-includes/js/wp-ajax-js.php?ver=20070118'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-includes/js/list-manipulation-js.php?ver=20070118'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-admin/custom-fields.js?ver=3733'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-admin/cat-js.php?ver=20070118'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-includes/js/tinymce/tiny_mce_gzip.php?ver=20061113'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://MY-SITE.COM/wordpress/wp-includes/js/tinymce/tiny_mce_config.php?ver=20070225'></script>

Jazzle –

Did your issue stay resolved? Or has the problem returned?

I found that CTRL-REFRESH sometimes fixes the missing MCE problem, but then if I refresh repeatedly, the problem comes back.

Travis