The Consolidated "Tech problems after IB's Facebook Connect implementation" thread
 

Let's compile here

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/13719531-post1.html
Error Message: Invalid API

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/13719594-post3.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/13720567-post16.html
Spurious history, calls to other pages

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/13721270-post16.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/techn...avigation.html
Need to use back button twice

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/13722073-post18.html
Back button doesn't work

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/13722157-post22.html
Multiple "stuttering" navigation sounds on page-calls

Corporate Firewall
 

Like several people have mentioned in other threads - my corporate firewall blocks, among other sites, Facebook. FlyerTalk used to be one of the few sites I could freely access from my office computer.

Now when I try to access each page, the top bar, up until the Facebook link portion, loads and then the page load stalls for a matter of minutes until (presumably) the call to Facebook times out, and then the rest of the page loads.

On at least one try I've counted at least two minutes trying to load a single page. If there isn't a way to disable whichever portion of the code is making a call to facebook.com during the page load, I'm guessing that any of us behind firewalls that block facebook will not practically be able to access FlyerTalk.

We do the same thing at work. I haven't been at work to test this yet, but if the same thing happens to me, this represents a major problem (not to mention it could be tracked back to me that I was allegedly trying to access Facebook).

I really don't want to have to mess with any ad-blocking software to fix this.

This
and this

would make me leave Flyertalk. How stupid.

i keep my history in this browser clean/organized, so it is getting REALLY annoying having it add garbage every time an FT page loads.

agree with above too, there are environments where i used to be able to use FT that i will no longer be able to, because of firewall/security. im sure we will be seeing a lot of similar postings from people who either dont have the option of or dont want to mess with FF ....... (and perhaps custom coding) etc.

im totally at a loss as to why a simple (ad) link has to autoredirect or whatever the hell it is doing...

Re: Invalid API
When we turned on the plugin, for the first 20-30 seconds we needed to set some variables. We had to have the plugin on to set them, and during that period, it threw this error. This should have been an isolated incident.

Re: Spurious history
It is not at all uncommon for websites to make javascript calls to other websites. For instance, when our ads load they make multiple calls to other sites. However, we are planning on adding an opt-out button for registered members who want to suppress the FB integration.

Re: Need to use back button twice
We are working on fixing this.

Re: Multiple "stuttering" navigation sounds on page-calls
We will look into this. Are you using FB connect, or is this happening without linking your accounts?

Re: Work filters
We have a potential workaround that we are going to roll out in the morning.

How about just taking the hint that the users don't want this and get rid of it?

Oh, that's right. IB doesn't really care what FTers want.

Plain ol' FT. I value my privacy (or what's left of it) too much to have a FB account.

So, I've not linked accounts, I've gotten rid of the FB button, I have FB calls directed in my hosts file to 127.0.0.5, and still the stutter.

sounds like absolute nonsense to me, ive never seen this before. ("spurious" history)

I agree. You guys are doing something wrong with the programming. I use Facebook. And I use Facebook Connect with other sites (where I actually want to have them linked--I certainly don't here) and have never encountered this crap.

Edit: I looked into it a bit more and it appears the web history is coming from Google Friend Connect, not Facebook Connect. Were you guys trying to link Flyertalk with Google Friend Connect too? Remove that partially-implemented crap and I suspect a lot of the problems will go away.

Page load time for me has gone up considerably since FB connect button was added. :(

Don't you get it that IB didn't, doesn't, and will never get die-hard FTers?

Not sure if that counts as "technical" issues though. (I mean the 2nd part of my statement ;) )

ETA:
Same problem here :(

Wasn't sure it's due to location (Asia-based) , or the updated FF 3.6.x Maybe all of the above?

^

***

Pages are taking way too long to load.

The stupid little "f Connect" button keeps loading at the last second, causing the page to "bump down"

Does IB want people to even participate in FT anymore? Or are you all content in spending a lot of money and watching your purchase wither away?

Yes I noticed this - not everyone is on a nice fast connection... And alot of FTers are by their nature moving around, posting from congested public wifi etc.

What caused it? The new facebook banner? Something weird is going on there with a call to google, but the history just shows the same page 2x in my history.

-David

But, from your response in the Facebook Connect FAQ thread...
I thought you weren't having any problems.

Is one of my suggestions not working for you anymore?

here's one of the links that i'm getting for my "spurious history" (which just stated appearing today):

http://mc8tdi0ripmbpds25eboaupdulrit...ken=1934965686 (copy and paste the link into a text editor or word to see it in its entirety and it looks like it's f/b-f/t related as i see ""friendconnect" in it)

and this is what i get if i access that page:

personal laptop at home using my own network with my firewall enabled and no issues prior to this morning

No working fine! Apologies if not clear. Originally using ....... myself I got rid of the button only. The line on which it appeared narrowed slightly but was still there. Your first suggesting got "rid of the whole thing", ie that facebook line. Your second suggestion got rid of all the flyertalk branding stuff at the top of the page - just as you said.

Thanks again.

"spurious" history fixed? nice ^

yup, appears to be fixed ^

Did this workaround get rolled out? If so, I'm afraid it hasn't worked.

+1.

It took me close to 20 minutes to load this thread, see that there was no update, click to respond, and to post this response.

And for now I'm naively looking past the good point made above that my firm's IT logs probably show that I'm trying to access Facebook repeatedly when I'm opening these pages.

Please offer an option to disable the Facebook call.

Actually, that's a fair point. Initially my opposition was on the grounds that this slowed my browsing experience down. The consequence that everytime I move to another page on FT was logging an attempted access to Facebook had passed me by. And it's not a consequence I'm particularly pleased about.

Oh well, no more FT from the office until this mess is fixed. :( :td:

Unfortunately, our work around didn't jive with FB. We'll have the ability to disable the FB script here at some point.

:confused: What kind of "user enhancement" is this that you have to run what you do here by facebook?

I'm sure that some money changed hands.

Every site that uses Facebook connect loads a javascript from Facebook's servers. This javascript is created dynamically by Facebook, and is not a static file.

Since people are having a problem with corporate firewalls, we created a Flyertalk cname for the sub-domain that the script loads from. Unfortunately, when Facebook's servers build that dynamic script, they look at the requested URI, and if they don't recognize it, the script errors out.

We don't run anything by Facebook. When I tried calling Mark Zuckerberg it went straight to voicemail.

This is 100% false.

Just wanted to add weight to the "ever since fb it is taking ages to load" discussion.

Did you disable the Facebook Connect feature at the bottom of your "Edit Options" screen?

I didn't because it says "Hide it from the forum bar" (or summat similar) not "Click here to disable it". I have now clicked it. Ta.