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Forums › Geekzone › One small change to Geekzone frontpage and Geekzone Live... Let's see who spots it.


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Topic # 114596 25-Feb-2013 08:03
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Released a small, but very important, change to Geekzone frontpage and Geekzone Live... 

The bug was not "killing" us but it was annoying.

Let's see who spots it.




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  Reply # 768705 25-Feb-2013 08:18
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Is it the "Windows Server 2012" logo or has that been there since the changeover?

Edit: Deleted and reposted to see whether it was this... and it's not.



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  Reply # 768708 25-Feb-2013 08:22
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The Windows Server 2012 logo went up last week when I got the new version but it's not it.





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  Reply # 768709 25-Feb-2013 08:23
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is it "update paused until browser is in focus again"?



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  Reply # 768711 25-Feb-2013 08:26
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Good spotting...

I was looking at logs last week and realised we were serving hundreds of thousands of those updates per week. There were actually a few cases of IP Addresses reloading around 30,000 times a day - one single IP address, one single browser.



After blocking the IP addresses and getting people to contact me when they couldn't access Geekzone I found that some people had a few tabs open on Geekzone frontpage.

One of them told me he had more than 100 tabs open on Geekzone alone.

Surely people would start noticing problems in performance if they have 100 plus tabs open in their browser? I mean, they can't even see the tab selector?




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  Reply # 768712 25-Feb-2013 08:26
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Clearly not the change @Nate requested



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  Reply # 768713 25-Feb-2013 08:30
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Actually I emailed Nate and RedJungle (Phil) about this - 100 tabs open! - and RedJungle is the one who suggested "why not test onfocus and blur to pause the updates?"

Easy to do it, about five minutes job to update Geekzone and Geekzone Live with this. And will save a few requests hitting the server every day...





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  Reply # 768750 25-Feb-2013 10:15
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pausing the live feed if the browser isnt focussed really takes away the benefit of leaving geekzone open.

I have 3 monitors at work, I have my browser on my right monitor, I have visual studio/work open on my main monitor. more often than not I have my browser on geekzone and I look at the live feed, but my browser doesn't have focus. so now that live feed wont update, meaning leaving geekzone open is pointless.

I could just hack the javascript to disable this "feature", but I really wish you would reconsider this.



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  Reply # 768757 25-Feb-2013 10:23
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We are talking about 100,000 refreshes a day that are simply ignored. This is almost 50% of all pages served every day.

I understand there are situations where a second or third monitor is used to keep the "things rolling" but a few spoil for everyone.

Sure you can change the script. I could even make an option to limit this change to non-subscribers. Or I could have to look at getting more servers sometime soon just to serve those ten or 15 people...




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  Reply # 768761 25-Feb-2013 10:31
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why not reduce the frequency of page updates if not focused? that still provides a benefit of leaving the page open which shows more ads to users.

or a better solution would be to have a session counter to see how many windows are opened and turn off the auto refresh if too many are opened. sure thats a little more work than a 5 minute patch job, but its a better solution and wouldn't effect most users.



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  Reply # 768762 25-Feb-2013 10:34
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reven: why not reduce the frequency of page updates if not focused? that still provides a benefit of leaving the page open which shows more ads to users.


We do not serve ads on these page views as only the div tag is changed. Serving ads on these div tags would break the ToS of any decent ad network. 




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  Reply # 768764 25-Feb-2013 10:40
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i mean ads on the home page.

By keeping the home page opened (I dont use live.geekzone.co.nz) I see the ads on geekzone (ive turned off ad blocking on geekzone, I actually find geekzone ads useful at times :)) and I see updates to the latest forum threads.

but by blocking the refreshing of the discussion list, it means there is no point for me to keep geekzone opened so I won't and so I won't see the ads, or the latest discussions.

I doubt I'm the only one who uses geekzone this way.

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  Reply # 768779 25-Feb-2013 11:03
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I would still disable the update when out of focus, but do the update as soon as focus is regained. Assuming the tab has been open longer than the refresh timeout.




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  Reply # 768782 25-Feb-2013 11:05
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RedJungle: I would still disable the update when out of focus, but do the update as soon as focus is regained. Assuming the tab has been open longer than the refresh timeout.


That's how it is now. If you move focus to the tab we do an update straight away, regardless of the timeout. Just open Geekzone Live and look at the times on top of each column. Click on the address bar then click back on the body of the tab. The time will change immediately, regardless of the 60 seconds timeout.




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  Reply # 768786 25-Feb-2013 11:13
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It's logging me out if I shift focus away for more than a couple of minutes so I have to re-log in.

IE9 by the way.



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  Reply # 768795 25-Feb-2013 11:18
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There's been no change in the way the login works. If you don't have auto login set when you login for the first time then it may log out during that time, but not because of the change.




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