frequent refresh of pages
I'm dealing with frequent page refreshes while I'm working. When I write "frequent," I mean every few seconds. I can't figure out what triggers it because it doesn't seem to be a result of a repeated action on my part. It seems to be at its worst when I first start working on the site but it has happened even after I've been working for awhile. I did not deal with this pre-update but I don't know if it's because of the update.
I'm on a PC laptop, Windows 10, Firefox browser, latest update. I switched over to Chrome to see if it's a browser issue. I didn't have any refresh issues but when I switched back to Firefox, it wasn't happening any more so I'm not able to determine if it's my browser or the site itself that is at fault.
Answers
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I was experiencing this earlier this afternoon: it felt like profile pages would refresh if I so much as looked at them funny. Certainly if I switched tabs, it'd reload as if I hadn't looked at it in a week -- even if I had just been there, 15 seconds ago.
Knock on wood, it seems to have calmed down now.
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@ Julia Szent-Györgyi, that's exactly what was happening. I stopped working on the site yesterday because the constant refresh hindered working (and was very annoying) so I don't know if it would have calmed down. I'm going to try working today and see how it goes.
Knowing this was happening to you, too, means it's not just on my end. Thanks for commenting!
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It seems that every time I click on a page I want to review, it "refreshes" automatically even though I just looked at it. Can you do away with this feature. If I want it refreshed, I can do it myself.
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Yeah, I wouldn't call it a "feature". It's a new behavior, and it is Highly Annoying (to put it mildly).
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Yes! I came here just to report the same problem. It reloads twice for me.
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I'm convinced it's actively causing harm. If you have a lot of tabs open, the background refreshes are triggering the new security system to treat you like a threat.
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As reported elsewhere on the forum, I'm experiencing this for the first time today. I wonder if others are finding it particularly bad right now, as I'm finding it very difficult to work in Family Tree with the literally continuous refreshing of the pages I have open. I obviously didn't read earlier complaints too closely - I thought this was happening about every half hour, not within - as it's become just now - within seconds of leaving / returning to a Family Tree page. I've been working in Family Tree all day (BST) and it certainly wasn't this bad until the last hour or so.
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So, has it been established if this is an ongoing, intermittent problem?
I experienced it noticeably for the first time yesterday, and that was when using Chrome as the browser, whereas 90% of my Family Tree activity is in using Firefox.
For me, it just became totally impossible to use Family Tree yesterday afternoon (GMT), yet I can find no other reported instances for that time period. It doesn't appear to be a browser problem (since the problem seems to be found in using both Firefox and Chrome), so I imagine its nature is proving too complicated, at present, for the engineers to apply a permanent fix.
As an update to my comments above, I have just confirmed my specific problem was cookie related.
I rarely have problems that others report and this has confirmed most are probably related to users not clearly cookies regularly. As stated, I use Firefox as my preferred browser and have my settings to delete cookies / clear cache every time I exit the browser. Not so with Chrome, which I have been using over the last few days, so I can easily restore the pages I had open the night before.
So, I can understand the usefulness of not clearing cookies on closure of the browser - problem is, this doesn't seem to suit the way FamilySearch (in particular) is set up, and once an issue is encountered it just won't go away until you have cleared out those cookies that seem to have caused the initial problem.
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I am told that the problem has been escalated. I will share what you have found. Thanks.
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I suffered this problem for the first time today. It started when I opened an Ancestry tab in the same browser (Brave) and searched the Public Trees. When I switched from the Ancestry tab and set focus on the FamilyTree tab, the screen repainted. Very annoying.
I moved Ancestry to a different browser (Firefox), and the auto-refresh problem in Brave went away.
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I have been regularly dealing with this issue for almost a month now. I use chrome browser. I often keep multiple tabs open (one of each sibling in a family group) so I can quickly switch between them for referencing. The pages will start auto-refreshing even when I'm just switching between these tabs after a few minutes of working on a different one. Each tab will auto-refresh at least two times in a row, a few times they've been stuck in an unending refresh loop and I've had to close the browser and re-open. I've also seen a huge increase in 500 Error Codes when I almost never encountered them before.
It does seem to maybe be linked to the number of users on the site, because when I'm on during a weird hour like the middle of the day or night (EST) I encounter the problem much less than in the evenings, weekends, or during the 4th of July holiday weekend (June 30-July 4, when I'm sure many people such as myself were spending their vacations working on their family trees).
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Yes, the behaviour is back today. I have been working in Chrome for the last few days and have had no problems, but now the Details pages are constantly refreshing (every few seconds) as I go between pages open in different tabs. Maybe deleing cookies will do the trick, but I'm only working in Chrome so I can restore pages from the night before - in Firefox, I set my cookies to be deleted when I close the browser.
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This refreshing behavior has been really bad for me this past week. I have used Firefox and Chrome and each experiences the issue. I have tried resetting cookies with no change in behaviour.
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I switched to Firefox , leaving Family tree open in Chrome, however. Just had a look using Chrome and - without any action from me - the behaviour has stopped. Maybe I was working too hard earlier and it got overheated! Only joking - there's obviously an ongoing problem requiring investigation.
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It's doing it again. I just cleared cookies. Didn't make one bit of difference. @ Maile L, any update on status of the problem? This makes it impossible to work on the site.
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@ Maile L, hello, please let me know what is happening with this issue. It's still doing it often while using Firefox browser. It seems to be happening less when I use Chrome. Thanks!
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Driving me mad over the weekend, but no problems since. It appears to be happening to me when I have checked the "Keep me signed in for 2 weeks" box. Surprised more users are not complaining about this extremely annoying behaviour.
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@Paul W, interesting observation about the "keep me signed in" box. I'll have to see if that is true for me, too.
I hope they figure out what is causing this and fix it. And yes, I'm surprised more people aren't complaining about it.
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I am sorry that you are seeing this. I have the box checked sometimes and other times I don't. Either way, I have not experienced any auto-refreshes at all. I will ask about it again.
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It seems to be sporatic. Drives a person crazy, but then it settles down and works normally. I use Chrome with win 10.
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Hi,
folk ask why are not more people are complaining about this bug/feature.
I'm complaining too. It's terrible, like others, I have switched browsers etc. it happens on all browser I tried.
Logged out and in again without "Keep me signed in" option, that settled it down (until now, about an hour uninterrupted work ;-) So this is a working interim workaround, but this issue needs attention!
Matthias
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@Paul W Thank you so much for sharing this tip about the "don't check sign in for two weeks!" The website was almost unusable with the amount of refreshing tonight. I logged out and logged in again (this time without checking the box) and immediately I have not had to deal with the issue anymore. Fingers crossed that this is the solution, at least until a bug fix comes out!
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I'll toss my hat into the constantly refreshing ring. Three different Win10/11 machines w/ Firefox variants. Trying the checkbox option.
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Hi. Thanks for your feedback on the sign-in box possibly affecting the auto-refresh. I have added this to the report
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I'm doing the Not Checking The Box thing. I'm still getting double-refreshed. But it's only frequently now, down from very frequently.
Today's awesome new feature tweak: Having to re-log-in every tab, after a short period of inactivity.
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I almost always have more than one person open at a time. I view profile pages side by side so that I can compare records and entries as I work, which is especially important when there are many people with the same or a similar name in connected families. I didn't deal with pages constantly refreshing before the update, but it's a frequent problem now. I don't know if this is causal or coincidental.
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Please post more details and screenshots so our devs can reproduce.
For example,
Is this happening ONLY on person pages or other parts of FS.org?
Only on Windows OS?
Does it happen on any tablets or Apple products?
What else happens when it refreshes?
Thank you
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It has nothing to do with ad blockers or any other type of browser plug-in or extension, because I don't have any of those things installed, and yet I randomly experience this.
This afternoon, there was about a half hour where the page would refresh if I so much as looked at it strongly. I had multiple profiles open at the time, along with several tabs with index detail pages, catalog pages, and record images; the refresh problem only affected the profiles, but those were subject to it regardless of which part I was on (details, sources, collaboration) or what sidebars or popups were or weren't open.
Eventually, the problem went away, without my intervention: I still have several profiles open, along with various other bits of FS, and there have been no spontaneous refreshes in at least the past hour.
For what little it's worth, I'm using Firefox (latest) in Win10.
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I'm in the US (well, I'm in FL so technically in the US) and I'm as refreshy as anyone else having the issue. For myself, the options seem to be:
Checkbox Off: Occasional to moderate double-refreshing. Having to re-login every FS tab, after a short* period of inactivity.
Checkbox On: Brutally heavy rates of refreshing.
*Short = Time it took to write this post.1 -
It seems to only happen when I'm viewing a profile page, not when I'm doing a record search. As @Julia Szent-Györgyi stated so well, it happens "if I so much as looked at it strongly." I've had pages refresh when I haven't clicked anything at all, when all I'm doing is reading profile details.
It also often happens to all profile pages that I've previously left open when I start up my computer again. No other site does that, just FS. It wouldn't be a problem if that was the only time they refreshed but it's not.
I've had pages refresh when I go to post all the information I'd just finished typing up, even though I had just been working on the site and on that person's page. It's not saved anywhere so I have to type all the information up again, and hope it doesn't refresh on me before I can post it. Honestly, there are times when I don't bother. I'm that frustrated by the frequent page refreshes. I can do research without updating profiles. I save the information on my computer. I update my tree on Ancestry. I also operate 2 family tree websites, one for my side and one for my husband's. I don't really need to add my research to FS but I do it to help others. But I'm not at all interested in spending my time dealing with these frustrations when I could be spending that time on research.
As I stated above, I'm on a PC laptop, Windows 10, Firefox browser, all up to date. Using Chrome as my browser instead makes no difference.
I don't understand what you're asking when you asked what else happens when it refreshes. Unless you mean the long string of loud "Arrrrghs!" and "What the...?!?!" and "Again? Are you kidding me?!?!" that comes out of my mouth.
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