Iphone favorite trouble.

September 18, 2010 9:30 AM

My account doesn't remember that I favorited something with my phone

When I favorite posts/comments on my iphone, they are marked as favorites on my iphone. But then when I log in online, they are not. For example, I favorited the questions about useful/unusual items for the office, and several other things because I wanted to read them on a real computer without having to search for them.

posted by bilabial to Bugs at 9:30 AM (22 comments total)

Sorry about the trouble—this is an easy bug to test but a very difficult bug to track down if we can't duplicate the behavior. I just tried favoriting something on my iPhone and then checked on the site with my laptop and it worked as expected.

Can you remember any more details about where you were when you favorited something on the phone? It could be a problem with a specific page, but the favoriting system in general is working.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:38 AM on September 18, 2010

Possibly ridiculous question- you're talking about "favorite" ON MeFi, not on some app that consumes the RSS feed, right?
posted by mkultra at 10:38 AM on September 18, 2010

not an app at all. Just the plus button, and then it pops up "favorite added!"

let me try looking at my phone and .... crap. those favorites are not on my phone page metafilter anymore either.

I'll favorite some stuff on the phone tonight at home and update this thread tomorrow morning/early afternoon with what's missing when I check the internet at work.

Thanks pb!
posted by bilabial at 11:31 AM on September 18, 2010

There is a behaviour in Firefox where, if you use the Back button to revisit a page, certain javascript actions are 'undone.' For example: If I remove a post from my REcent Activity page, visit the homepage, then use 'Back' to return to Recent Activity, that post reappears. The same thing happens with Favorites - they disappear if you go back to the page. Could this be what happened on your phone?
posted by Hardcore Poser at 12:19 PM on September 18, 2010

I haven't experienced that, Hardcore Poser. I don't believe that's a known issue--there's no technical reason for that to happen when you click the back button.
posted by pb (staff) at 12:44 PM on September 18, 2010

Well, and "undoing" the favoriting javascript wouldn't affect the fact that the post/comment has been marked as a favorite in the big MeFi database.
posted by misterbrandt at 12:48 PM on September 18, 2010

Unless undo is really "send the Javascript request again, which interprets the request as 'change favorites status'".
posted by pwnguin at 1:06 PM on September 18, 2010

They're not.

    javascript:addFav(...);

vs.

    javascript:delFav(...);

posted by misterbrandt at 1:58 PM on September 18, 2010

Not only are the functions different for adding and removing favorite but they're triggered with a click, not the page loading.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:21 PM on September 18, 2010

Perhaps you've heard of the Cookie Monster? Well this is basically the same, except with favorites.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:48 PM on September 18, 2010

There is a behaviour in Firefox where, if you use the Back button to revisit a page, certain javascript actions are 'undone.'

Are you sure the page isn't just caching what the page looked like when you landed on it, before you took whatever javascript action you took?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:51 PM on September 18, 2010

jessamyn: "There is a behaviour in Firefox where, if you use the Back button to revisit a page, certain javascript actions are 'undone.'

Are you sure the page isn't just caching what the page looked like when you landed on it, before you took whatever javascript action you took"

This could very well be; I'd just assumed it was a default thing in all Firefox browsers, but perhaps there's something wonky with my cache settings. I'll check. Sorry for the false alarm.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 4:07 PM on September 18, 2010

Also notable is that favorites from IRL don't show up on one's activity page, which doesn't really matter but is something I just noticed.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:31 PM on September 18, 2010

Is this oddness happening only at work, or somewhere with a web proxy? Our work proxy is pretty aggressive, and will often cache things like this. Have you tried reloading?
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 6:03 PM on September 18, 2010

Navelgazer, where are you expecting to see the IRL favorite that it's not showing up? Can you give me an example of a favorite and a URL where you're expecting to see it? There are several pages across the site that show stuff you've favorited and stuff people have favorited of yours.
posted by pb (staff) at 6:22 PM on September 18, 2010

I think I found it and fixed it up Navelgazer, let me know if not. Thanks for the heads up.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:03 PM on September 18, 2010

thanks pb. It doesn't really matter, just something I noticed when I was surfing through my profile to get to my recent IRL.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:15 PM on September 18, 2010

Another iPhone question. Does the "skip to menu" trick only work the first time you use it on a page? I feel like it used to always work all the time, but now often it doesn't, and so far the once-per-page thing is my hypothesis. I'm not sure why it would have changed, though.
posted by salvia at 10:23 PM on September 18, 2010

Yes, Skip to Menu works once on the page. This started happening with the latest OS. When you click "skip to menu" you're actually loading the exact same URL with an inline target appended. So instead of http://www.example.com/page you go to http://www.example.com/page#menu. Then, as far as the browser is concerned, your current location is the 2nd URL. If you then scroll back to the top of the page and click the link again, there's nowhere to take you—you're already at the 2nd URL. (Though I agree it would make more sense to take you to the anchor again.)

So the trick is to click your back button once if you want to use Skip to Menu again. You'll go "back" to the first URL (though your position within the page won't change), and then you'll have somewhere to go again when you click the link. I'm with you, I was confused by the change but it does make a certain kind of sense.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:23 PM on September 18, 2010

Oh thank god someone else had that "skip to menu" problem and I'm not losing my mind, and my ipod is not possessed by some cranky demon.
posted by Rumple at 11:30 PM on September 18, 2010

Ah, thanks, pb. That's a really clear explanation, and thanks for the trick.
posted by salvia at 12:52 AM on September 19, 2010

I have a fix for this in place so you should be able to skip to menu as many times as you want now.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:43 PM on September 20, 2010