HTML tag problem with story submission

[BeechLeaf]

So to summarize (as far as I know), page 1 is always correct: titles, Star Wars scrolling, and centred scene breaks whatever they consist of. And beyond page 1, any kind of content, centred by any means, is likely to be randomly omitted. No-one's found any way of forcing it to render correctly on the first view.

Edit 1: See EmilyMiller's #54 below for amendment.
Edit 2: And WaxPhilosophic's ingenious #55 for how to make it go wrong on page 1.

 

[IWroteThis]

Run it through a validator like https://validator.w3.org. Tons of errors and warnings. Many on stray closing a tags.

I still don't understand why refresh works as a fix.

Because the bug appears to be triggered by mousedown, mouseup, and/or onclick actions, as a direct mouse click is the only way you get the buggy version.

In my testing, there is nothing random about it. If you directly click on a link that ends in ?page=# you will get the buggy version of the page. If you reload the page, View Source, Open Link in New Tab, Open Link in New Window, or copy and paste the address into the URL bar, you get the correct page. I think the only thing I didn't test was opening it from a bookmark, but I suspect it will give you the correct version.

The centering bug was explained in a thread about it in the tech support forum. Summarizing, it's from the way browsers load style tables (or their equivalent) and the timing related to the content. Apparently the code is loaded with the first page and the content uses that code, while subsequent pages clear (or do something to) the function calls, invalidating the definitions. Or something like that.

The "correct" style tables are in fact loaded... but after the > Page 1 content has been sent. That's why an F5 refresh fixes everything.

It came with a site software update last November that was trying to improve overall site performance. It did, but this hands-crossed thing came with it.

When I was a multi-site sysadmin, if I didn't back-out this kind of repeatable failure with an upgrade, the clients would hang me up by my... well, they'd be really, really unhappy.

I find that explanation rather lacking, and even more questionable, mainly because you can see that the HTML code itself is different by using the debug tools. Styles change how the HTML code is rendered, not the HTML code itself.

 

[EmilyMiller]

The centering bug was explained in a thread about it in the tech support forum. Summarizing, it's from the way browsers load style tables (or their equivalent) and the timing related to the content. Apparently the code is loaded with the first page and the content uses that code, while subsequent pages clear (or do something to) the function calls, invalidating the definitions. Or something like that.

The "correct" style tables are in fact loaded... but after the > Page 1 content has been sent. That's why an F5 refresh fixes everything.

It came with a site software update last November that was trying to improve overall site performance. It did, but this hands-crossed thing came with it.

When I was a multi-site sysadmin, if I didn't back-out this kind of repeatable failure with an upgrade, the clients would hang me up by my... well, they'd be really, really unhappy.

Woosh…

That’s the sound of most of that going over my head.

Then when you’re my height, that happens a lot .

 

[EmilyMiller]

So to summarize (as far as I know), page 1 is always correct: titles, Star Wars scrolling, and centred scene breaks whatever they consist of. And beyond page 1, any kind of content, centred by any means, is likely to be randomly omitted. No-one's found any way of forcing it to render correctly on the first view.

Not quite.

Looking at my own stories, and echoing what others have said, my centered titles (which could be on page six if that’s where a section starts) seem to always load fine. My centered section breaks (which are often just text or emojis) always fail on page 2 onwards and always succeed on refresh.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

Because the bug appears to be triggered by mousedown, mouseup, and/or onclick actions, as a direct mouse click is the only way you get the buggy version.

To test this theory, I loaded page 2 of my story directly. It rendered correctly. So far it appears the page navigation click is the cause.

Then, I clicked the arrow to go back to page one, and this is where it got trippy. In the first half or so of page one, I got the buggy behavior. No centered * * * breaks. After about the halfway point the * * * breaks appeared where they should.

Bug and no bug...in the same HTML page.

No refreshing or anything on my part. It just decided to start behaving in the middle of rendering.

If you want to try, the story I tested is: https://www.literotica.com/s/honeys-rizz-quest Just tack a ?page=2 on the end of the link to start on the second page.

 

[BeechLeaf]

Actually that makes sense, given the explanation that it loads the mumble mumble correctly on the 'first' page. If the first page is page 2, then it'll go wrong when you go to a 'subsequent' page, even by back-arrow.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

Actually that makes sense, given the explanation that it loads the mumble mumble correctly on the 'first' page. If the first page is page 2, then it'll go wrong when you go to a 'subsequent' page, even by back-arrow.

Yes, but it only mis-rendered the top half of the page. That's what's weird.

 

[BeechLeaf]

As far as I can recall, the problem is that they're sporadically dropped, not that all such text is dropped. FrancesScott above found the first four were dropped. I don't recall anyone else coming up with a specific number, but that would be consistent with your finding: errors up to a certain point.

 

[old_prof]

For my stories, it was never as consistent as the first four on a page or something. I had some appearing in the middle of a run of missing ones.
But it was 100% reproducible. The same ones appeared (or not) each time you go to a page from the next or page number button.
Reloading always fixed it. And it started a few days into the Winter Holiday 2025 contest.

But a reproducible case and pointing it when the change happened was not enough to get Manu to fix it.

 

[IWroteThis]

To test this theory, I loaded page 2 of my story directly. It rendered correctly. So far it appears the page navigation click is the cause.

Then, I clicked the arrow to go back to page one, and this is where it got trippy. In the first half or so of page one, I got the buggy behavior. No centered * * * breaks. After about the halfway point the * * * breaks appeared where they should.

Bug and no bug...in the same HTML page.

No refreshing or anything on my part. It just decided to start behaving in the middle of rendering.

If you want to try, the story I tested is: https://www.literotica.com/s/honeys-rizz-quest Just tack a ?page=2 on the end of the link to start on the second page.

I tried in two different browsers and was unable to replicate the behavior. The first page loaded fine in both cases.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

I tried in two different browsers and was unable to replicate the behavior. The first page loaded fine in both cases.

Inconsistent bugs are the best bugs!