So... this is the first time I've been able to "speak" on the forum in days. The forum is going through so many changes so fast that things are falling down all over the place. I can't post pictures sometimes, and sometimes I can. I had one day where I couldn't even look at my pictures in my own albums - some would show and some wouldn't. The album features have always had hiccups, but there were work-arounds... they no longer work-around. This latest change killed my ability to type on the website, and I didn't have time to troubleshoot it until today.

I was able to get Internet Explorer to work (yuck) on the forum, but not Google Chrome. In all fairness to the forum, I'm very aggressive with my privacy... so I have the Ghostery, Avast, and Ublock Origin extensions active. I'm not a fan of being tracked and force-fed ads for things I already bought. Going askew here - what kind of logic is it to try to sell you stuff you searched and purchased? Computers are soooo stupid. Anyhow... it was uBlock Origin that was preventing the editor from loading and allowing me to reply/post on the forum.

While I look for a work-around to this latest change, I thought I'd at least share what I learned - in case anybody else is lost in the ether out there. Oh... and ether (starting fluid) is a bad word in a diesel forum. Just sayin'.

 

Yes Rich, ether is no bueno. I appreciate you posting up about the forum debacle. I have not had any real issues since shutting off the infinite scrolling and related thread settings, but I also don't have those extensions....though now you are making me think I should. I have adblock and that seems to help a great deal.

 

Try to remember to post up problems in the Site Announcement forum too, so our IB rep is becomes aware of them. https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/forum74/

Here's the latest thread regarding the text editor disappearing. https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...l#post17986876

Stewart

 

FWIW, Rich, your absence around here was both noticed and missed.

 

I appreciate the sentiment, thank you. It was frustrating being locked out when I can help someone.

With uBlock Origin, you need to click on the Logo on your browser extension bar, then you can click "Requests blocked". This will show you a whole bunch of stuff trying to track you, and the forum will be on the list of requests blocked. Copy the name of the page you want Ublock to allow through. You can then go to the settings icon and select the "Whitelist" tab, then paste the site name in the list - and be sure to hit "Apply changes" before closing.

I put ford-trucks.com on the list... that allows me to type here, even with uBlock Origin active.

Since uBlock Origin is no longer showing the number of items blocked while here, I know it's completely off while visiting the forum - that's the disadvantage of putting websites in a white list. Oh well... my other extensions picked up the slack, plus this site is safe anyway.

 

Copy that hope this will fix mine also

 

Get a VPN and you could probably ditch most of those extensions.

From what I can get from my brief research of your noted extensions, you're not doing much for your privacy other than making yourself feel better about your privacy. There is a lot of "behind the scenes" exposure you're not covering with extensions like that.

A VPN is the gold standard in internet privacy.

I recommend PIA.

 

Yeah, I didn't do a lot of homework before going on a privacy spree, other than knowing the apps I chose clear the obvious stuff. The web pages I visit are cleaned of extraneous junk and they load fast, plus I don't get mystery spam in my email. While I might not be completely anonymous on the web, I can breeze through websites without hitting speed bumps.

 

VPNs protect you from the 'real' prying eyes... Not big corporate.

Did you see the reports after GDPR was released? GDPR forced websites to disable a LOT of the background crap they have from tracking and advertisers. Comparisons on loading times from UK and US versions of the same site have dramatically faster loading times in the UK with none of the bloat ware

 

That doesn't surprise me in the least. I recently shut all my blocking stuff off just to see what would happen, and I was shocked at all the vomit that spilled off the websites into my eyes. I was constantly playing keep-away with things that wanted me to click them, and I could barely get to the content I wanted. I guess I got spoiled by how clean my web experience is. We can either get the same laws as Europe, or we can keep playing one-upmanship with blockers and blocker defeaters. I vote for a little more privacy protection... but we would run the risk of getting charged for more stuff on the web.

 

A VPN is not ideal for me because I live in the country and the reduced data rate that the VPN would force would put my speed down near 4MB/sec.

I use Chrome and an ad blocker and just deal with the ads that come through.

As for forum foul ups, I cannot post or remove pictures unless I select "Go Advanced" in the editing process.

 

A while back, when there was a forum update, IB added the social networking buttons to every page. These are the ones that allow you to Facebook Like, Tweet, etc... It was tracked that those buttons caused a significant increase in loading times when they were added because they had to ping each social media service before the page could load.

 

It all just sucks....and we have to deal with it to some degree.