Chat Room Problems

**Smeazel** · May 15th, '03, 05:50 PM

Hm... today I tried about twenty or thirty times to get on the chat room without success. I know I'm not the only one who's had trouble with the chat rooms at times, but I figured we might as well compare notes to see if we're all having the same problem so it might be easier to narrow down what's causing it.

Anyway, here's my situation: I get past the login screen to the screen where I can click on "Open chat applet in its own window" or "Open chat applet in the current window". No matter which one I click on, though, the web browser immediately exits. In desperation, I even downloaded and installed Netscape and tried it, but the same thing happened with Netscape as with Internet Explorer, so apparently it's not a browser issue...

I'd been able to get on the chat room just fine in the past, so I don't know why I'm having a problem now... Anyone else who's had a problem with the chat room, have you had the same experience as I had, or have you had different problems?

***Super Squirrel*** · May 15th, '03, 09:37 PM

Dan's not here but let me give it a try. *cracks knuckles*

I would check to see if you have the correct version of Java. I know that if you do not have the correct version, you will seeming wait forever for nothing to happen. Try and get the most recent version of java and that should fix the problem.

**Smeazel** · May 15th, '03, 10:18 PM

Originally posted by Super Squirrel
I would check to see if you have the correct version of Java. I know that if you do not have the correct version, you will seeming wait forever for nothing to happen. Try and get the most recent version of java and that should fix the problem.

Thanks for the thought, but as I said before, I've been able to get into the chat room before with no problem, so which version of java I have should not be the issue - I certainly haven't downgraded to an older version lately. (Also, I'm not waiting forever for nothing to happen - the browser just exits immediately.)

**Ellis** · May 16th, '03, 01:04 PM

I have the same problems. 1 out of every 10 times I try, I can get into the chat, but once I do, I can't change windows, or else IE will crash. I have the current, highest-level downloads with the most recent java, and it stalls on IE, Netscape -and- Mozilla.

I figured it's a Mac problem, though, because my husband's computer (Windows 98) does just fine with it.

**Ben Seeman** · May 16th, '03, 01:10 PM

Unfortunately, there's not much that I can do at this point. When Dan gets back from Ireland I'll bring this to his attention and see if he has any ideas as to why this is happening.

**keithcurtis** · May 16th, '03, 01:11 PM

I have given up on the Chat Rooms. They are more effort than they're worth.

Keith "Mr. silent" Curtis

***Derek Hiemforth*** · May 16th, '03, 01:42 PM

Originally posted by Ellis
I figured it's a Mac problem, though, because my husband's computer (Windows 98) does just fine with it.

Hmm. Probably not... Albert Deschesne frequents the chat rooms pretty regularly, and he's a hardcore Mac guy.

**Smeazel** · May 16th, '03, 01:46 PM

And I'm using Windows, and having the problem, so it doesn't seem to be an OS issue...

**AlbertDeschesne** · May 16th, '03, 02:57 PM

Originally posted by Derek Hiemforth
Hmm. Probably not... Albert Deschesne frequents the chat rooms pretty regularly, and he's a hardcore Mac guy.

Yeah I try to be there every Monday & Thursday, but to be fair -- I also have a PC and sometimes (like last Thursday 5/15) I have had to log in with that.

So yeah, it might be a Mac thing, and if the chat room requires java1.4 then you HAVE to be running OSX 10.2 or better since it only runs on that version of the Mac platform.

***Simon*** · May 17th, '03, 04:06 PM

The problem being described (the browser crashing) is an issue with Java itself on your system, not the chat...

Unfortunately, due to some of the ongoing wars between Microsoft and Sun, some of the browser plugins for Java can be a bit finnicky.

If you're having consistent problems, the easiest thing for you to do will be to uninstall Java from your system and then grab the most recent version from Sun's website. You can find the (free) download of the installer at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html

You want the JRE (not the SDK).

That should take care of any issues that you're having with your Java installation.

I spent some time going through the code for the chat a few weeks before I went of vacation and fixed all known bugs in it....I also went ahead and did a lot of performance tuning and enhancements to the server side code which should make it pretty danged tough/resilient. Since the new code has gone into place, I haven't heard of any problems with the chat at all.

Note: as stated, the above problem is not with the chat, but with Java in general. Due to the extremely stringent security model in place for unsigned Java applets, I can't really exert enough control on your system to have the effect being described.

**Smeazel** · May 23rd, '03, 11:46 AM

Originally posted by dsimon
The problem being described (the browser crashing) is an issue with Java itself on your system, not the chat...

I was pretty sure the problem couldn't be with Java itself, since I had installed the latest version of Java and other pages and programs that used Java were running just fine. But, in desperation (and without having read your post yet, incidentally, so I still had no particular reason to assume the problem was with Java but couldn't think of anything else to try), I uninstalled Java and installed it again from scratch - and it now works. So apparently Java was indeed the problem; I must have had a corrupt installation (and it must have been corrupt in such a way that all the other Java programs I tried still worked for some reason - I guess the chat room's just particularly finicky

). Sorry for the bother.

***Simon*** · May 23rd, '03, 11:49 AM

Originally posted by Smeazel
I was pretty sure the problem couldn't be with Java itself, since I had installed the latest version of Java and other pages and programs that used Java were running just fine. But, in desperation (and without having read your post yet, incidentally, so I still had no particular reason to assume the problem was with Java but couldn't think of anything else to try), I uninstalled Java and installed it again from scratch - and it now works. So apparently Java was indeed the problem; I must have had a corrupt installation (and it must have been corrupt in such a way that all the other Java programs I tried still worked for some reason - I guess the chat room's just particularly finicky ). Sorry for the bother.

The chat uses a fairly significant amount of Java2....Swing, networking, and other APIs. It's entirely possible that the other Java apps that you were using simply didn't use the corrupted libraries....

At any rate, glad you got it fixed.