Notification bar -"light stays on"

LegacyUser

Linda Richards Chappell said: I know you have recently revamped the notification bar - with messaging and the bell image. The "red light" is staying on. Also, as the pages change from a person page to the source linker - the light changes from one to the other.

I'm someone that checks these regularly as people do message me often. To check and have nothing there is a real distraction.

Can you please review the programming? Thanks.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: A number of people have reported this problem.

I have seen inconsistency with the red lights myself.

They sometimes appear when I first open FamilySearch, especially via a shortcut to a page other than the page that appears when I sign in. They could be the results of my browser (Chrome on a Windows 10 computer) retaining a cache image of that page, because when I open a different page, the lights disappear.

Try refreshing the page to see if the lights change (mention what browser and operating system you are using). If they change, then clearing your cache may resolve the issue for you.

If clearing your browsers cache and history (Chrome is notorious for retaining cache images, which really slows down its performance) does not resolve the issue, then let us know.

LegacyUser

Linda Richards Chappell said: I clear history weekly, but I am a heavy user of FS (avg 4-5K per week). I don't usually clear cache. Today I did, and that solved the issue. Thank you for the suggestion. Problem solved.

I use Windows 10, Chrome browser for most of my work.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: What I found with Chrome is that I have to Clear both the history and the cache, for "All time". Otherwise, anything beyond the time that you do select is not cleared and remains in place. The cache is the most important item that should be cleared on a regular basis. It is what holds the images of the pages you visit. The history only holds the sites and pages that you visit.

These are my settings

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The reason I do not like to clear the cookies is because that can be problematical with many sites and will void your two-week sign-in to FamilySearch, requiring that you re-enter your credentials.

LegacyUser

Linda Richards Chappell said: I also delete history for all time, but leave cookies. However, the two week sign in for me fails. I still find I need to sign in daily. I sometimes use other devices, but that is not always the case.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: After twenty minutes of inactivity, the system will disconnect, and require you to sign in. This is a security feature necessitated by problems created by people with nefarious plans for FamilySearch, who actually would try to use any computer signed in, but left unattended.

The two-week signin feature allows the system to reconnect by refreshing an open page or using a bookmark to open a page in the system. For instance, one of the bookmarks that I use on a regular basis open the Changes to people I am watching page.

On clearing history, I hope you also mean clearing the cache. It is very important that you clear for all time, because otherwise, you leave anything past the time you've designated untouched.

LegacyUser

Linda Richards Chappell said: Thanks for clearing up the "sign in", it makes a bit more sense now. My bookmark is "find a person by id". My "work" is straightening out the tree branches that have gotten twisted miserably, so that bookmark page is very useful for me in more ways than one.

LegacyUser

Paul said: I find the red dot above Messages comes on intermittently. I can only assume the developers have introduced this purposely, as a reminder to keep checking for new messages (and notifications).

A bit like a "boy cried wolf" situation, whereby I find myself ignoring it due to too many "false alarms". Trouble is, occasionally a new message really has been received!

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I just logged off FamilySearch, and then logged back in. The dot appeared on the messages icon. When I clicked on the messages icon, the dot disappeared, but the list of recent messages was displayed with the option of seeing the full list (opening the message page).

At times, I have clicked on the message icon and nothing happened. I'm not sure if that was a browser problem (Chrome on a Windows 10 computer), or something was triggered that prevented it from displaying the most recent message list. That was irritating and I cannot repeat the action at this time. I believe that I had to close out my browser and then reopen FamilySearch to get it to work.

At any rate, I should not see any red dot unless there is a new message.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Hm. I just checked the message icon on this Get Satisfaction page and it highlighted, but would not go any further. That needs to be addressed for this page.

The Bell icon works on this page and displays the last few Notifications, but not the Messages icon.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: What I don't like is that I cannot right click on the icon and go to the messages page. I have to open the list of the last few messages first, and then I can open the messages page.

That also needs to be addressed.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I just opened Firefox to check something for another thread and the same thing with the icons happened there. The red dot showed up on both the message and bell icons. Clicking on the icon made the dot go away.

This really needs to be corrected and not be dependent upon some cookie. When FamilySearch opens, check then to see if there are any new messages or notifications, so that the red dots do not appear.