Images not displaying when using FF browser

[Luscious]

Browser, version and OS: FF 56.0.2 64-bit and Windows 7 Pro 64-bit

 

Steps to reproduce/what were you doing before it happened? n/a

 

 

What happened? Images do not display in the threads

 

 

What did you expect to happen? Backward compatibility???

 

 

Link to a page where it happened, if applicable: see here

 

Screenshots of the issue, if applicable: see below

 

Any other relevant details: hope you guys can fix it

 

 

If it's a cloudflare error, what was the ray ID from the bottom of the error page?

[DarkEnergy]

Is FF version 56 the last one supported on Windows 7 64 bit?  If not you're almost 30 versions out of date.

[HanZie82]

Update.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release

 

afaik latest version also works on Win7

[LogicalDrm]

This occasionally happens on latest version. Usually fixed by refreshing. And since I see the image trying to load, it might be something cache related.

[Luscious]

1 hour ago, LogicalDrm said:

This occasionally happens on latest version. Usually fixed by refreshing. And since I see the image trying to load, it might be something cache related.

Nope. Been like this for over a year now and my browser has been left untouched for much longer. Everything used to work just fine, which leads me to believe something got changed on LMG's end some time ago with regards to how images are handled.

[LogicalDrm]

44 minutes ago, Luscious said:

Nope. Been like this for over a year now and my browser has been left untouched for much longer. Everything used to work just fine, which leads me to believe something got changed on LMG's end some time ago with regards to how images are handled.

For one, you can't say nope if/when you are using different version of the browser.

 

For two, other than giving name and money, LMG is not responsible for any changes regarding forum.

[colonel_mortis]

FIrefox 56 is more than 3 years old (September 2017), and has a number of security vulnerabilities. The standard for most websites these days is to support the latest and previous versions of major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari), and not to actively support any older; I am slightly more forgiving, but 3 years old is unreasonable. You say it's not broken, but web standards have progressed a lot since then - there have been 3 new javascript standards, and a new CSS standard, as well as a bunch of living standard changes, so sites that are built for today's web will not function correctly for you - LTT may be the first you have encountered, but it will not be the last.

 

The forum moves forwards, adding new functionality (such as the image lazy loading that seems to be causing the issue here), updating libraries to get new features or security updates, and removing legacy code that is hard to maintain or that adds unnecessary complexity. It is not fair for us to hold back on all of those simply to support an arbitrarily long tail of people who refuse to update their browser - if we don't draw the line at 3 years old, I don't know where we could. You are in a group of <0.5% of the visitors to the forum on really old FF versions, and I suspect that a sizeable chunk of the others in that group are bots that are pretending to be people. Honestly, I'm surprised that it works as well as it does.

 

Even if I wanted to support this, that change would have to be made by the forum software devs because it is part of the core forum software and not a custom LTT addition, and there is no way that I would be able to convince them that it is worth their effort to support a 3 year old browser.

[Luscious]

31 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

FIrefox 56 is more than 3 years old (September 2017), and has a number of security vulnerabilities. The standard for most websites these days is to support the latest and previous versions of major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari), and not to actively support any older; I am slightly more forgiving, but 3 years old is unreasonable. You say it's not broken, but web standards have progressed a lot since then - there have been 3 new javascript standards, and a new CSS standard, as well as a bunch of living standard changes, so sites that are built for today's web will not function correctly for you - LTT may be the first you have encountered, but it will not be the last.

 

The forum moves forwards, adding new functionality (such as the image lazy loading that seems to be causing the issue here), updating libraries to get new features or security updates, and removing legacy code that is hard to maintain or that adds unnecessary complexity. It is not fair for us to hold back on all of those simply to support an arbitrarily long tail of people who refuse to update their browser - if we don't draw the line at 3 years old, I don't know where we could. You are in a group of <0.5% of the visitors to the forum on really old FF versions, and I suspect that a sizeable chunk of the others in that group are bots that are pretending to be people. Honestly, I'm surprised that it works as well as it does.

 

Even if I wanted to support this, that change would have to be made by the forum software devs because it is part of the core forum software and not a custom LTT addition, and there is no way that I would be able to convince them that it is worth their effort to support a 3 year old browser.

Thank you for that very in-depth explanation.

 

You are right - LMG is probably the first website I use on any frequent basis where I am seeing issues crop up. What's funny is that on pretty much every other place this browser takes me stuff continues to just work. I do have Chrome installed, but it's only on a few rare occasions (sites with heavy Flash based content for example or security obsessed) where I am forced to use it instead of FF.

 

I understand it would be highly advisable to update from 56 to the current version, but I have so much customization in place it would be like hitting a "reset to default" button and wipe out everything I've done. It's not just about remembering open tabs, it's skin customizations, themes, tab layout, security settings etc... FF broke a lot of that compatibility when they moved to newer iterations, and frankly, I got sick and tired of waiting for 3rd party fixes and "community input" to take the place of what FF would do natively, or for FF to implement these fixes themselves. It's also not possible to have two version of FF installed anymore (another of their "improvements") so manually porting things over cannot be done either.

 

As it is, I have far too much invested with my current install to wipe it out with an update for the sake of maintaining "compatibility". That's a compromise no user should be forced to make. The bottom line is that whoever is dictating the changes at Mozilla isn't doing a good enough job. When features go missing, existing features become broken and community input takes the place of your official support I'd say it's time to rethink that business strategy. Moving forward can be done better and it should not mean picking up the pieces of a broken product.

 

I understand this goes well beyond your scope. But I am sure my example isn't the only one where a software vendor has left users behind, just for the sake of progress.

[HanZie82]

16 hours ago, Luscious said:

Thank you for that very in-depth explanation.

 

You are right - LMG is probably the first website I use on any frequent basis where I am seeing issues crop up. What's funny is that on pretty much every other place this browser takes me stuff continues to just work. I do have Chrome installed, but it's only on a few rare occasions (sites with heavy Flash based content for example or security obsessed) where I am forced to use it instead of FF.

 

I understand it would be highly advisable to update from 56 to the current version, but I have so much customization in place it would be like hitting a "reset to default" button and wipe out everything I've done. It's not just about remembering open tabs, it's skin customizations, themes, tab layout, security settings etc... FF broke a lot of that compatibility when they moved to newer iterations, and frankly, I got sick and tired of waiting for 3rd party fixes and "community input" to take the place of what FF would do natively, or for FF to implement these fixes themselves. It's also not possible to have two version of FF installed anymore (another of their "improvements") so manually porting things over cannot be done either.

 

As it is, I have far too much invested with my current install to wipe it out with an update for the sake of maintaining "compatibility". That's a compromise no user should be forced to make. The bottom line is that whoever is dictating the changes at Mozilla isn't doing a good enough job. When features go missing, existing features become broken and community input takes the place of your official support I'd say it's time to rethink that business strategy. Moving forward can be done better and it should not mean picking up the pieces of a broken product.

 

I understand this goes well beyond your scope. But I am sure my example isn't the only one where a software vendor has left users behind, just for the sake of progress.

I disagree.
I used FF in the past, stepped over to Chrome cus FF was lacking in speed functionality and looks.
Now im back to FF, its fast looks good and relatively safe too.

Sometimes you just have to go with the times and update your stuff.
Else we could've just as well still communicate over BBS with our 8086 and 2400baud modems...

[Luscious]

8 hours ago, HanZie82 said:

Sometimes you just have to go with the times and update your stuff.
Else we could've just as well still communicate over BBS with our 8086 and 2400baud modems...

Well if you're going to make that comparison why are 100M active PC's today still running Windows 7? Not exactly a small number and I doubt you could activate a fresh install today. MS continues to send out DAILY security updates just to ping machines that still have the OS running - a completely needless step IMO since they have ended support maybe a year ago. Not so obsolete as people think it is if MS continues to gather data on it.

 

I will tell you why. Older hardware that just continues to run (and even newer hardware sold today). Installed software that cannot be reinstalled/reactivated. Compatibility issues with newer OS. Driver updates that break compatibility (thanks nVidia/logitech/Corsair). Or just settings/history that would be wiped after a reinstall.

 

Hardware and software companies can be notorious for keeping their stuff working. All it takes is one lazy vendor not updating their product properly and things get broken. For complex systems it can be a balancing act. What do you sacrifice? Where do you compromise? How much down-time will it take to bring it back to where it was? And if you have multiple machines, how much $$$ will it cost? Believe me, I would have kept FF updated as I religiously did prior to the new versions after 56, but learning CSS just to get it working normally as I had it before WASN'T so cut and dry.