What a bunch of BLAH

I wrote a huge long post for this forum, and when I hit post it said:

"There is already a topic with this title in the forum, please use your browsers back button."

I hit back, and it erased my entire post. Thanks a lot for nothing ATS!!!

Ouchies!

yup - had that happen to me before.

These days if I'm writing a novel I *always* ctrl-a, ctrl-c it to ensure I have it stored away in case of these moments.

how is this the fault of ATS ?? it was YOUR fault , YOU selected ` post new topic ` instead of ` post reply `

if you write huge posts - draft them in an external word proccessor - then copy to the forum then they are imune you your mistakes / browser crashers / server outages - anything that can go wrong

but do not blame ATS for your error

reply to post by ignorant_ape


Disagree! One of the first tenants of good user-interface design is that whatever is counter-intuitive or unexpected, especially that which causes the user to lose work, is the fault of the software, not the user. Perhaps unavoidable, but the responsibility is for the software designer to perfect their product, not for the user to conform.

A good interface takes humans into account, rather than making them follow a particular and potentially arbitrary set of rules.

This case is especially bad, since the user should obviously be taken back to a screen where they can appropriately re-title their post, with their work intact.

This case is especially bad, since the user should obviously be taken back to a screen where they can appropriately re-title their post, with their work intact.

That is what I was getting at, thanks. I did mean thread, not post, sorry about that. It's not very practical to expect everyone to search the forum for threads with the same title every time they start a new one.

I agree that it would have been a lot smarter to copy/paste instead of composing in this little box. Lesson learned

reply to post by maus80


it's in your computer's cache memory. so if you push the back button, and it's not there, if you push the forward button and go back to that page that told you that it was a duplicate and was not posted, at that point, it's still in your cache. there must be a way to retrieve it from the temp files, but i am not that computer savvy.

any way you can back up to that page? the one that told you it was a duplicate and couldn't be posted?
and what browser are you using? oh nevermind.. i see by the time stamp on your post, that was four hours ago



[edit on 26-10-2008 by undo]

it's annoying as it's happened to me before as well. When ever you write something, just use Windows text editor and save what you've wrote and then it's just a case of of copying and pasting into ATS.

Or simply hilight all the text you've written and hit the ctrl - c key to copy it into memory and if something goes wrong when you hit the dreaded post button, all you need to do is ctrl -v to get your writing back.

it's still in your cache even on the page that says you need to repost it elsewhere. there's a way to get to it at that point, to copy it, but i just don't know the details. just don't leave that page (the one that tells you it's a duplicate and hasn't been posted, if you find yourself in that situtation), because there's a way to extract it from browser temp files. grr, wish i could tell you more. i'm sure one of the big mods who designed this site, could tell you.

I am curious about this though...

Other forums when I hit back... the post is there

It USED to do the same here..

I am curious what changed in the software that no longer lets the back function work at ATS..

I usually use simple notepad as sometimes I want to save a copy, but sometimes late at night you get lazy.

I did find one fix with firefox... if you kill firefox with task manager and reload firefox... it will restore the last cache

But you have to do it immediately after your error before a page refresh

Don't know if this works in other browsers.

Other browsers That's a myth right?

Meh...there was a night where I composed the reply of all replies. Long as hell and relevant (in my opinion.. ).

I accidentally erased it (don't know how). I was pretty upset, but recomposed it...and just prior to posting, lost it again.

This occurred once more. I settled for a two line summation that wasn't taken as seriously as the post I had originally composed...

reply to post by MemoryShock


That has happened to me.

I wrote a long reply. Excessively long. When I hit the button, I got page cannot be displayed (that used to happen a lot for me on this site).

So, I was like screw it, I'll rewrite it. Rewrote it, and wasn't all that happy. So I edited it for a while. Then I hit reply and got "Page cannot be displayed".

I think I almost broke my keyboard.

Long story short, I learned that when I have a long reply to select all of the text and copy it. That way, if it gets messed up, I can just hit the back button and paste it in.

reply to post by maus80


For long text Ctrl "A" and Ctrl "C".

I indeed learned that the hard way. In fact in the BLAH thread I just lost some purple-prose because I am "not allowed..."

Weak! Weak I say!

edit: wait...some other thread.

[edit on 26-10-2008 by pluckynoonez]

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by maus80

 

it's in your computer's cache memory. so if you push the back button, and it's not there, if you push the forward button and go back to that page that told you that it was a duplicate and was not posted, at that point, it's still in your cache. there must be a way to retrieve it from the temp files, but i am not that computer savvy.

It's possible his cache is set to something like 0 then if you have to back space you lose anything entered. If that is the case then he's screwed pretty much either way. You can set the cache which is nice but if you set it to 0 it saves space but can bite ya in the but in the long run.

reply to post by MemoryShock


I had the exact same thing happen in a debate.

Finished my reply.....poof...gone when I hit post. Ranted for a few minutes, took some deep breaths, did it again. Same thing. Then I felt an odd sensation in my head, which turned out to be brain cells stirring, and I did what many are suggesting. I wrote it elsewhere and then copied it in. Of course that time there was no problem.

Most of my posts I roll the dice with. I will never do that again for something important like a debate. Those things have time limits.

reply to post by Darthorious


well it has to be temporarily saved in order to be held in memory long enough to post. when it doesn't post, that process doesn't complete and it may still be in that sorta limbo? i know it works if i try to post during a server outage. the data stays in temp memory as long as i stay on the page it took me to when i attempted to post, the page that says the server is down and come back later. i just leave it on that page, open a second, different browser to surf and to determine when site is back up, then when server comes back up, go back to the original browser with the data in temporary memory, i hit the reload button and it posts. it must be saved somewhere in the browser.



[edit on 26-10-2008 by undo]

Yep!, I've had that to happen..(mad slams head into computer)..... It makes you feel like a moron as you try to remember what the heck you just erased.............lol,,

I still have keyboard marks on my forehead from the last time this happened to me!

And I am embarrassed to report that it happens much more frequently to me than I would like. You'd think I would learn, right? Nope. I still type away madly, somehow hitting a control key sequence accidentally or something, and ending up looking at that empty text box.

If someone can motivate the HTML guru's to cache partial responses, I will buy them a drink!

reply to post by MemoryShock


Oooh I did that too. Except I just gave up. I didn't even BOTHER typing in any lines. I just left it. Man was I ever ticked right off. I typed it once, Lost it, typed it a second time, and lost it, and i was close to using all 10,000 characters both times.

So, I decided to leave it...

That really burned me...

Copy and Paste. Copy and Paste.. Thats the way to do it.

- Carrot

reply to post by CA_Orot




I am glad to see that I am not the only one...

I swear I almost threw my laptop that night...