Bugs

[ThatBadGuy]

— — —— —— — ——[ BUGS ]—— — —— —— — ——

These pesky critters get everywhere and FimFiction is no exception. Bugs are really annoying, especially when they get into the way of your writing, and A NIGHTMARE if you are a perfectionist. I should know.

There is of course github, but it has been a while since any major update and there weren’t much of improvements on the bugs. So I took it upon myself to point out some of the most obvious ones that NEEDS to be fixed.

————— —————[ DESKTOP ]

When you Order all stories by a Relevance and go at the end of the page, all is fine and dandy, since you can see at what page you are and how many of them remains. It even shows the first three pages and then the final three pages you can get to, you can even click at any of them to be quickly directed there. BUT there are missing arrow keys to direct you to the first page and then the last one, the current arrow keys just move you by a one page.

Of course you can just click at the last page directly without the arrow keys, buuuuut... ...You can’t.

I have done some experimenting and apparently the crash occurs only when there is large amount of pages. If you have for example max 72 it works just fine, but I guess if the number is large enough, the link just doesn’t work? I don’t know about web programming, but I guess there is some limited variable that can’t get past some certain number.

There is also one more thing:

When you Order all stories by ANY OTHER variety than Relevence, this happens: Current page, gone. Next page, gone. Preview of three first and last pages, just gone!

Oh hey! At least there is quick arrow key to the first page!

I bet it is just an experimental arrow keys to test out how the stuff works or something, and when you upgraded it, you simply forgot about the other varieties of order. It’s fine. Shit happens. PLEASE FIX IT.

—— — ——

Also there is this: I like to write with two windows open for reasons. I won’t bitch about it because it is more or less my problem, but still. Even in full screen, this layout of the page just leaves this long stripe of emptiness behind that could be used much more more effectively.

Oh? What are you saying? You used that space to show ads, Tags, and Groups? Congratulations! You did it again! This time it is Rating. Every other variety looks just like what I showed above.

Either way, it still leaves behind this complete emptiness staring into your very soul and distracting you by philosophical questions like: “What does the emptiness means?” and ”With what can I fill this gaping void?”

—— — ——

When you have a story and you overlook all of its chapters, few of them show a date. Not sure if it is a date when the chapter was written or the last update, but the problem is that these strings of text show up next to random chapters. Everything else is just barren.

—— — ——

During writing sometimes a warning appears saying that you have more than 2 line breaks.

I am very much aware about the rules of multiple line breaks and it is good that the warning shows to inform you. But there still should be an option to ignore in case the guy is an asshole, or in case the multiple lines are a part of a horizontal rule to separate the rule from the text.

As it is now, the warning just can’t be turned of, leaving this yellow stripe behind that takes up writing space on the screen and when you have a Night Mode on, it is kind of a punch to the face.

Also: “These won't show up properly on the site to let your readers choose between indented and spaced paragraphs.”?

There should be link somewhere in the text directly to the rules of multiple line breaks, where it is perfectly explained why constant use of multiple line breaks is forbidden.

Believe it or not, but I am an idiot! To this moment I believed that what the warning says is "intended and spaced paragraphs." And so I was confused and had no idea that 'indented' and 'spaced' are two separate styles of paragraphs! And if internet taught me something, then it is that if there is one then there are others.

Just put there a link to the rules when the warning appears.

—— — ——

There is also the other warning about capitalized letters. This warning more or less shows up at random. I have my sentences fully capitalized and it shows up anyway. Plus the ‘fix’ button doesn’t even work. And of course it can’t be ignored.

I have a suspicion it is because the warning is faultly programmed to show up when BBCode letters are not capitalized, but the fix is also programmed to ignore them and so it will always remain there.

—— — ——

No spoilers! In the Stories overlook, written stories doesn’t show how many words they have, how many chapters they have nor the info about last modification.

They do however show this stuff after you publish the story, but not before that.

—— — ——

The preview of a story is inconsistent, The Edit:

The chapter preview:

The 'Show Preview' in the Edit:

Sometimes it's just minor differences like header color or link underline, but sometimes it shows that my custom Horizontal Rule doesn't work. But at the same time it does show properly in the preview and even on other devices that I tried.

With this inconsistency I am not even sure how the story will look like when I finally publish it.

—— — ——

Embed BBCode has trouble to show videos and images for reply comments:

When you click at video in reply comment, it just won’t play. If you click on image in reply comment, it is the link of the image that activates instead the hiding box.

It probably has to do something with the performance feature that forbids images and videos load on the site all at once.

————— —————[ MOBILE ]

This thing...

THIS THING!

THIS F*** THING!

AAARGH!

Let me tell you, as a guy with OCD, that LOVES writing on mobile wherever he goes. This thing was a hell for me. I do now write on an app, but still now and there I have to get it on the site. I bet it is just a dead set size for desktop version that got into the mobile version.

Please fix this. For the love of god and all perfectionists like me, fix this. Else I’ll tell Twilight where you live.

Also, this is fun too!

Not sure if you can do anything about it though.

—— — ——

The writing window itself has also few bugs.

Anytime you use a button that causes a dropbox(rollout, panel, whatever) inside another one like the Show More, it will always fail to close and obscures all other options inside. Even if you click elsewhere and the Show More dropbox closes, the dropboxes within that dropbox never close. You need to refresh the page if you want to use the hidden options again.

It is especially big problem on a mobile platform, because the smaller screen always forces most of the options to hide. Comment writing windows have it too.

—— — ——

Right Align button doesn’t work in both platforms.

The BBCode itself does work, but the button itself doesn’t enforce it on the text.

—— — ——

Then there is the yellow stripe during the writing just like in the desktop version.

And as you can see, writing space on mobile version is even more essential.

—— — ——

The overlook of chapters of your own story is also pretty buggy.

The dragbars(whatever) that allows you to change the order of chapters doesn’t work on mobile platform.

Same like in the desktop platform, the info about the chapter pops up at random, this time the word count goes along the ride. You could place the word count under the cloud and trash can.

—— — ——

Rarely, but still it is happening, a long ad is appearing in the middle of a story and pushes the page’s size.

—— — ——

When using Embed BBCode on Mobile platform and you use it on YouTube video, the popup window won’t take the whole url.

I think I know what is the problem:

Desktop url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kekn2HhE-qI&list=PL0AdA9VduQpIPO4pdXuGE35K1t8S4Vk0F&index=7 Mobile url: Https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kekn2HhE-qI

The Embed BBCode isn’t properly adapted for mobile version.

—— — ——

The mobile platform also has the same issues with reply comments as desktop platform has: Same. Video does not work and images use a link.

—— — ——

On the mobile platform, there are also these numbers representing the user’s comment people reply to:

Why there isn’t instead a name of the user just like on desktop platform? I have no idea what happened there.

Also there is a minor bug with the video Embed BBCode. On desktop you can click at the video once and it will automatically play. On mobile platform you must click twice:

—— — ——

Finally, there is a small minor bug that I think should be addressed.

When you open the user's panel at the left side of the screen, you can still control the page behind it. It isn't as much annoying and can be easily avoided, but still. I think when you already change the focus of the page on some other feature, you should disable the controls of the page all together.

Same for the popup windows.

You can still move the background page around.

The 'Add To Bookshelves' window also opens up at wrong position.

—— — —— —— — ——[ FIN ]—— — —— —— — ——

This is more or less it for the bugs on FimFiction.

There are ultimately much more bugs and errors around the FimFiction than I showed here of course, but I wanted to shed the light on some of the more important ones.

All for all, I think that mobile platform is getting terribly overlooked. Here is a little appetizer:

That's all from me.

~ThatBadGuy

[ocalhoun6]

Wow ... this should probably be submitted as like 20 separate issues, rather than all in one big dump.

[AndrewTru]

tell me about it, I am still reading all of the bugs that are found. ThatBadGuy must have some time on there hands if they find this many that fast.

[knighty]

Both myself and Xaq have had problems in the last year and thus a lot of stuff has gotten delayed, but that's why this exists so things aren't forgotten about, even if they take time to be sorted out.

[AndrewTru]

thanks for the info.