Kara

@kaara

oh, to be [REDACTED]

it/she

1/4th of @staff

🏳️‍⚧️ t4t

i feel the wind in my dreams

Ⓐ

Kara @kaara4/19/2023, 10:15 PM

cohost dot org @staff

cohost dot org @staff3/1/2023, 9:23 PM

cohost patch notes vol. 52: 52 weeks of patch notes edition

it’s been a year (approximately) of patch notes! a weird milestone but a valid one. thanks for being here with us.

this is also the first week where we get to reap the benefits of our re-situated sprint cycle (they end on Wednesday now) and use our trello “done” column instead of going through git commits, making this waaaaaaay easier to write.

WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE: information on the Firefox “upload failed” CORS bug

a mysterious figure in an ill-fitting trenchcoat and fedora. he has a stylish mustache and the build of three eggbugs standing on top of each other.

Psst, hey you. I heard you might be in the business of taking care of…problems. Is that right? Well, I’ve got a job for you, if you can bring ‘em in alive, that is. A longstanding bug has been preventing many a Firefox user from uploading images to Cohost and we need some assistance tracking down the issue. Here’s the lowdown:

Every now and then, users will write in saying that their images get stuck in the “uploading” state, trapped in purgatory. The vast majority of these cases come from Firefox. Further inspection reveals that the majority of these cases are caused by a CORS request failure when attempting to upload to our image host.

That’s…all we got! We have yet to reproduce this issue (except for a single freak incident on jae’s computer) and can’t seem to nail down where it’s coming from. Our first guess was Firefox tracking prevention, but fiddling with that doesn’t seem to reliably fix the issue. My next best guess is a common plugin or extension.

The first person to figure out what’s going on and provide clear, reliable steps to reproduce the issue will be awarded with 2 codes each good for one year of Cohost Plus. Use them as you wish!

Email support@cohost.org with subject “CORS Hell” with your findings. Good luck and stay safe!

#cohost corner

Kara @kaara4/19/2023, 10:15 PM

claimed!

heads up, someone claimed this today - I'll leave a note about it in the next patch notes :)

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in reply to @staff's post:

Daisy @dsy3/1/2023, 9:30 PM

thanks for making cohost!!!!! :host-love:

wyx!@kobold-wyx3/1/2023, 9:34 PM

legendary patch notes week, great engineering work y'all

James Munns @jamesmunns3/1/2023, 9:36 PM

I really love the new trenchbug, and the concept of a "repro bounty"! Awesome notes, no notes.

Joy @ahoyitsjoy3/1/2023, 9:40 PM

Kind of shocked I haven't encountered that CORS bug because I do use Firefox and I generally have a "talent" for unintentionally finding odd bugs in software. Godspeed to the bug hunters and thanks for the patch notes!

Quidam @Quidam3/1/2023, 9:43 PM

Thank you for all your hard work, I love this site and I'm so glad it exist. Thank you!

oddstrangepenes transgaystrange @oddmerit3/1/2023, 10:03 PM

ooooh good luck to whoever pursues that bug bounty, and thanks for 1 year(ish) of updates! i have a question: in cohost patch notes vol. 50, you mentioned that you were still working on the january financial report. unless you published it and i missed it, i assume you're still working on it? it seems like you've been pretty busy the past few weeks so i can understand if you've needed to push it back

Lotte 'just an idiot' May @LotteMakesStuff3/1/2023, 10:05 PM

Hello thank you for the patch notes, can you tell us if eggbug ate well this week?

Moose @M00se0nTheLoose3/1/2023, 10:05 PM

The new markdown guide is amazing! Thank you guys so much!

“hardline” mike sugarbaker @misuba3/1/2023, 10:14 PM

Nobody should spontaneously combust

Lupi @lupi3/1/2023, 11:02 PM

fixed a bug where posts with long tags would display the full tag list instead of collapsing their height

was this a result of the post about the bee movie script tag? if so, oops i think

jae @jkap3/2/2023, 2:00 PM

it was actually supposed to be doing this the whole time, and also it was the great gatsby tag that made me realize it was broken

Lupi @lupi3/2/2023, 2:04 PM

I didn't even see that one, it's funny to me that we had two Extremely Long Tag Incidents in a week that had no apparent overlap on my end.

I should've submitted that feedback request to adjust the word wrap on extremely long tags in the post editor so they conform to the capsule shape, but i forgot lol.

nortti OH1CAU @nortti3/1/2023, 11:15 PM

the HTML reference states "an HTML element for an image, which does not need a closing tag and cannot end, but should end in />" (and also recommends <br />), but isn't that deprecated as of HTML 5? as far as I understand the / carries no semantic meaning and is only allowed there for backwards compatibility with XHTML

frankie boyle's beanbag chair of death @micolithe3/1/2023, 11:30 PM

Technically you don't need to do it anymore but I'm sure pretty much everything except the W3C validator doesn't care and parses it just fine.

nortti OH1CAU @nortti3/2/2023, 12:50 AM

oh it's allowed by the HTML parser as described in the spec. I just don't see the point of telling people to use a feature that explicitly does nothing (see item 6) and only exists for backwards compatibility

eevee @lexyeevee3/2/2023, 9:18 AM

yeah it was never a requirement of html, and i think an html4 parser would even ignore it as junk (or worse)

nortti OH1CAU @nortti3/2/2023, 2:38 PM

looks like HTML 4 was designed to be SGML-conformant, which means it ough to have been a parse error (though I don't think there ever existed a single strictly conforming HTML 4 parser). apparently SGML also has a short way to write <tag></tag> but that's <tag// which is just horrible

eevee @lexyeevee3/2/2023, 2:51 PM

i have never in my life heard of an html4 parser that would throw an error on anything haha

David Smith @Catfish-Man3/1/2023, 11:24 PM

Oh, thanks a ton for "fixed a bug where collapsed 18+ posts didn’t have their tags visible". Also woooo public API :D

frankie boyle's beanbag chair of death @micolithe3/1/2023, 11:30 PM

cors is one of the most frustrating things on earth to work around, good luck.

💤🌵🤖@cactus3/1/2023, 11:53 PM

i love eggtrio's massive trenchcoat

Emma needs ☕️@emmah3/2/2023, 12:11 AM

Please file a Bugzilla ticket in the Web Compatibility component about the CORS issue if you have not already.

jae @jkap3/2/2023, 1:47 AM

we don't have anywhere near enough information to file a useful bug report yet, hence the bounty we put out! once we know what's happening, including confirming it's not Our Fault (haven't ruled that out yet) we absolutely will

Aqueous [Lv. D Sluggish Edgegirl]@AqueousAblution3/2/2023, 12:37 AM

fixed a bug where posts with long tags would display the full tag list instead of collapsing their height

As a serial tag essayist, thank you so much for fixing this! I kept forgetting to report it despite noticing it basically every time I made a substantial post, probably because I'd just spent all my writing energy on talking about fictional robots, haha :host-nervous: (sorry about that!)

As an aside, it might be worth adding horizontal rules to the Markdown cheatsheet, since Cohost does support them and, while not always super relevant to the average user, they're pretty basic Markdown formatting and the cheatsheet also lists other relatively niche things like footnotes.

Caro @caro3/2/2023, 12:39 AM

i assume garden chainsaws are labeled as such to remind people about what nonviolent purposes said chainsaws are bought and sold for

effika @effika3/2/2023, 12:59 AM

I... I could have been using a href= etc for links this whole time??? I've been struggling to remember what order Markdown needs for links and I could have just been typing them out like I have been for decades???? This is the best patch notes for linking to the new guide that let me realize that!!!

Oh, and the three eggbugs in a trench coat illustration doesn't hurt either. Great notes and good job everyone.

Glitchy Pixel - Italo Capasso @glitchypixel3/2/2023, 1:04 AM

Hmm the upload bug you mention sounds suspiciously similar to a long old bug that you can find in Dropbox from time to time. Uploads never seem to finish at the last minute, and it's always a Firefox problem. It tends to happen with relatively big files like above 50-100mb though. You might want to check out if you can get a similar behaviour with Firefox and files of a certain big size i.e above what 25-50mb maybe?

Librus @Librus3/2/2023, 4:48 AM

I love the implications that Cohost doesn't "squash" or "zap" bugs in their website, but captures and fixes them. Like a little rehabilitation program.

jae @jkap3/2/2023, 2:36 PM

please remember to spay and neuter your bugs

Jectoons @jectoons3/2/2023, 5:10 AM

Re: the CORS bug, I have encountered it on Vivaldi (Desktop and Android) as well as Ecosia (iOS). Firefox was working fine for me, and I understand Vivaldi is Chromium based and Ecosia on iOS is Safari based… dunno if that helps but I miss being able to upload images :(

UPDATE: Also having issues on Firefox now...

eevee @lexyeevee3/2/2023, 9:17 AM

hmm the only time i've gotten CORS specifically was from having cohost.org whitelisted in umatrix, but not sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com

i've had the same symptom from attaching an image which no longer exists in the filesystem when i try to post (easily caused by trying to attach multiple screenshots from the same screenshot tool) but i don't know if that was CORS or not

already emailed these both to support@ though

ALSO THANKS wow i should finish part 3

jae @jkap3/2/2023, 2:37 PM

hmmmmmmm i am considering ways we could handle the latter but realistically i'm not sure if we can do anything there. interesting edge case

eevee @lexyeevee3/2/2023, 2:54 PM

i was actually surprised it was a problem with cohost because i did not even realize you could take the File from a dnd and attach it to a form; i've always just read the Blob out of it immediately and thought that was the only thing you could do. fwiw this has always worked with discord, twitter, tumblr, etc. as far as i know

jae @jkap3/2/2023, 3:38 PM

yeah we're attaching the file directly b/c that's what the browser gives us but shoving the blob in might make more sense. i'll look into it

walking mirage @atomicthumbs3/3/2023, 9:41 AM

added a display setting to auto-expand all posts with content warnings

at last, a website with a hardcore mode

蒸しルビー @YuushaRuby3/5/2023, 11:16 PM

am I goin crazy or is there an extra parentheses here in the new markdown guide:
"you can use these colors by wrapping them in rgb(var()))."

ian ✌︎('ω'✌︎ )@jyushi3/7/2023, 10:06 PM

thanks so much for your hard work, staff!