4 ms·

If you do not enable the tracking scripts on the page (google analytics) then the "/game" entry point after signup just endlessly reloads itself automatically i

by relkor 11y ago

If you do not enable the tracking scripts on the page (google analytics) then the "/game" entry point after signup just endlessly reloads itself automatically in Firefox 42.0. I can watch the page load resources in the developer console. There are a couple of different stopping points. One is when it loads all the way to /api/user-config while the tab has focus, then it starts reloading. Another case is where I leave the tab, then I load all the way to /api/tutorial/?userBase=XXXXXX&tutorial=true plus some images (ending with logo.png). As soon as the tab gains focus again, it triggers a reload.

oduvan 11y ago
Do you see the same behaviour with all dev tools turned off?
- relkor 11y ago
  Yes. I orginally tried the page in a vanilla browser. What I then observed was a black page, which the game logo would then appear and then fade out. Sometimes I get a splash screen with a tip centered at the bottom of the page. Then the page would go black again. This cycle has a period of 3-5 seconds. I had never seen this behavior from a website before, so I opened up the dev tools to try to figure out what was going on. That is when I discovered the page was reloading itself. Without the dev tools, the address bar does not indicate that the page is reloading. There is no clue for a regular user what is going on other than this weird looping that does not let the user interact with anything. I would be happy to collect more information for you, because this bug feels interesting. A dependence on google analytics scripts is something that I have never encountered before. If you are doing some kind of strange hack to get extra bandwidth out of google or getting google to do some sort of computation for you using their tracking scripts a la AWS Lambda then that might be a more interesting article for HN. PM me if there is any specific tests or information you need. I use NoScript, and when I signed up I enabled the empireofcode.com domain for scripts. I will never enable the domain google-analytics.com to serve JavaScript.

by relkor 11y ago

oduvan 11y ago

Do you see the same behaviour with all dev tools turned off?

relkor 11y ago
Yes. I orginally tried the page in a vanilla browser. What I then observed was a black page, which the game logo would then appear and then fade out. Sometimes I get a splash screen with a tip centered at the bottom of the page. Then the page would go black again. This cycle has a period of 3-5 seconds. I had never seen this behavior from a website before, so I opened up the dev tools to try to figure out what was going on. That is when I discovered the page was reloading itself. Without the dev tools, the address bar does not indicate that the page is reloading. There is no clue for a regular user what is going on other than this weird looping that does not let the user interact with anything. I would be happy to collect more information for you, because this bug feels interesting. A dependence on google analytics scripts is something that I have never encountered before. If you are doing some kind of strange hack to get extra bandwidth out of google or getting google to do some sort of computation for you using their tracking scripts a la AWS Lambda then that might be a more interesting article for HN. PM me if there is any specific tests or information you need. I use NoScript, and when I signed up I enabled the empireofcode.com domain for scripts. I will never enable the domain google-analytics.com to serve JavaScript.