baliktad

Thanks for the update IB-Dick. It sounds like what you're saying is that you suspect there is nothing wrong with the system and that all FT's servers are working just fine. From your point of view, it is people's expectations that are incorrect, and they are seeing results that might not make sense if they haven't viewed a thread in a number of days.

I would like to offer up my experience with this very thread. I started this thread 3 months ago, and every time a new post appears, it shows up in my "My Flyertalk" page. Since I'm very interested in getting to a resolution, I always pop in whenever there are new posts. Today the thread has been very active. Several people have posted, and I have generally kept up with the responses throughout the day, even replying myself. But the "magic" link is still utterly and completely failing for me in a very obvious, repeatable way. Here's the magic link in my My Flyertalk:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/techn...-new-post.html

Theoretically, this should take me to your post posted at about 5:50PM, since that's the newest one since I checked in at about 5PM. Instead, it redirects me to this post (hxxp so FT doesn't auto-correct the URL):

hxxp://www.flyertalk.com/forum/technical-issues/1202102-flyertalk-cant-seem-remember-last-viewed-post-2.html#post16623439

Which turns out to be post #48, a post by josephstern made over 3 days ago. Given that I have posted in this thread today (#67 & #69), there is just no world where it's possible that the latest unread post is over 72 hours ago. And yet, every time there's been a new post today, the thread shows up in my My Flyertalk page, and I am greeted by josephstern's comments made days ago instead of the latest post or two as expected.

Please confirm if this is the expected behavior or not, and whether you need more information or evidence. This happens to me on a maddeningly frustrating basis and I'd hate to see the issue dismissed because we haven't described the unexpected behavior well enough.

IB-Dick

Well, the database is marked correctly, because it says that you last viewed this thread at Wed, 29 Jun 2011 01:13:15 GMT, which is the exact time you posted your reply. If it's not directing you to the proper place, then it's got to be an issue with your setting to view 40 threads per page.

We will continue to investigate.

ftnoob

Thanks for the interesting look behind the scenes, IB-Dick, much appreciated! I knew the marking of last read had a limited look back window, but hadn't stopped to figure out how limited it was, or that it had changed. I for one am not a fan at all of the short five day look back.

To be continued...

baliktad

I don't know what to say other than 40 posts per page is a perfectly valid configuration, and I highly doubt that this problem is related to that setting. If that's really the most plausible theory at this point I am happy to change my posts-per-page setting to another value.

The fact that the authoritative database is correct doesn't surprise me. Deep down, FT does know the right answer, it's just not making it all the way to my browser. I still strongly suspect this behavior is due to a misbehaving FT server, most likely some caching scheme taking the wrong action.

ftnoob

As much I enjoyed the detailed explanation, it doesn't seem to synch with the nature of the problem most posters are experiencing. It would take some time to reply to the various points of concern, so for now I'll post a couple screen shots that should be helpful to the techs.

The first was made after using my two-step approach to get to my first unread post; it worked fine, just took an extra step, and required that I know which page to load. At the time I loaded my page 2 of the thread, there were three new posts, #74, #75, and #76. #76 was at 20:13 CDT, so just a minute old:I came back about 81 minutes later, and used the -new-post magic URL and got this:The magic URL incorrectly took me to post #16634900, from 16:20 yesterday, but the php (?) code writing the page correctly inserted a link to post #16642375, from 20:25 today, as the View First Unread link.

So we're all in agreement that the database is correct. The problem is that the magic URL redirect code is not working the same as the code that uses that database entry to generate the page.

ftnoob

Thanks, IB-Dick!

Implicit in your post, however, are some assumptions that may not be true. I didn't actually say that I executed the steps in that order; I listed the URLs in post number order. I might or might not have hit the magic URL in FF 5 before hitting it in FF 4. With more details about the steps and time frames, there is a way to explain what happened and to show that it is different than what should have happened, even if I did use the magic URL in FF 5 and then used it in FF 4.

I think I know what you mean, and it probably was not to label one browser incorrect and the other broken, as that leaves neither functioning correctly.

Let us move on to look at an actual example, however:

I pulled up an RR thread on FF 4 and the magic URL worked fine:
Next I pulled up the same thread on FF 5 and the magic URL gave me:
This mashup shows a couple things:I think part of the misunderstanding could be traced to different mindsets. The people most affected by this are hitting FT several times per day. They are more concerned that the broken magic URL functionality is repeatedly sending them quite a few steps backwards from where they have already read. IB seems to be thinking about this mostly from the more casual user perspective. Just guessing, though.

ftnoob

I think we have pretty clearly established that there is an intermittent issue with the magic URL redirect functioning incorrectly. While perhaps not 100% established, my impression is that the database is probably always being correctly updated with the proper data regardless of browser. I agree with IB-Dick's doubts that database scaling is the problem, and I think the experimenting with cutting the "assume read" window from 10 days to 5 days is not going to get us anywhere.

The important thing to analyze next is how the magic URL redirect is implemented. Not being a web technologies expert, I don't even know anything to guess other than a URL rewrite rule. Is that how it is being handled?

Whether the answer is yes or no, I think it is a safe bet that the redirect is handled by different code than that which handles the page generation. The page generation seems to work perfectly, so we should focus our attentions on the rewrite rule (or whatever code handles the redirect).

The error might be because:What else might it be?

"In some cases" seems to be a common denominator, so at some point we will need to ask "why is the error intermittent?" There could be some faulty browser identification code, but we should postpone that discussion for now.

YuropFlyer

I can definitely support the assumption it's something wrong with Firefox 5

Having been "forced" to upgrade, I immediately noticed that "jumping to newest post" is broken. It was perfectly fine with Firefox 4.

Same system on IE9, it still does work. I'm not a big IE supporter, but if the issue with Firefox keeps consisting, I might at least for FT have to switch back to IE.

ftnoob

Sorry, but that makes zero sense. This thread started on 04-Apr-2011, something like six to ten weeks before FF 5 (non-beta) existed. Review the early posts on this thread, and they were all IE8/IE9, IIRC.

To the extent it is a "browser-specific" issue, odds are that is only the case due to bad browser-detection code deployed by FT.

Silver Fox

I am running FF5. View first unread will not take me to the first unread and hasn't done for a week or so now so the problem still exists - I upgraded to FF5 on 21st June, and possibly the 2 are linked - can IB-whoever-you-are try a test under FF5 if you have not already done so to see if it is a browser issue? Perhaps you have and I missed it.

ma91pmh

To repeat what I said earlier, the issue occurs for me on FF3.6 and IE9

The only browser it works is Safari so for now I use that to read FT as it is pretty much unusable in my default FF3.6

kipper

I use IE9 at home and experience the problems.

I use IE7 at work, and do not experience these problems.

IB-Dick

The url is rewritten to a handler that uses the core vB files and modifies their output. :-) It's magic.

lewinr

couple quick observations:

1. I use IE9 and it seemed the problem started for me after I installed IE9. So it cannot be only a FF problem.

2. I have been using FT for many many years (I even cannot remember how many) and the system of taking me to the first unread post has been working pretty reliably for all those years. Suddenly it went very wrong, in many threads, and it was obvious to me. So I dont think this is just an issue of a not-very-accurate system becoming somewhat less accurate. The problem was obvious enough to me, and judging from the other users who have appeared here, to them also.

Silver Fox

I like magic. So, could you weave your magic spell to fix this problem so that no matter when I go to this thread http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...l#post16580902 that when I click "View first unread" that it doesn't always take me to that post on June 18th. Thanks !