Annoying glitch prevents me from using Tip.It Theme Skin

[WolfieMario]

There's a weird bug I've been constantly experiencing while using the Tip.It Theme skin: seemingly at random, pages no longer load at all, even if I clear my forum.tip.it cookies. I am presented the following for any page:

It seems to randomly start and stop, and has only occurred for the Tip.It Theme. It began for me yesterday when I attempted to preview the posting of my latest topic, and I couldn't see anything. It wasn't an issue with my post, because I pressed the back button and swapped skins, and sure enough, the preview appeared successfully. However, any attempts to return to the Tip.It theme were met with the same screen you see above. So I left it set to Deflection. However, today I turn my computer on and find that my skin has reverted to the Tip.It theme again, bugged and all. About an hour later, I try again, and I still can't get in, nor can I go back to any valid history page and attempt to change my skin. Attempting to delete any and all cookies related to Tip.It does not help, and I am still presented the, erm, dark-blue screen of death.

So I decide to see if Internet Explorer can load the page and let me log in to change my skin. I go open the page in Firefox (3.6.3) again to copy the URL, and miraculously the page has successfully loaded in Firefox (which is the browser that kept failing to load it), without me changing anything :blink:. I switch again to Deflection, because I never get the bug on that theme. Then a few hours later there's an issue with the circuits at my house, and my dad has accidentally turned off the switch hooked to my room, causing my computer to turn off. Once I restart it and attempt to access Tip.It again, I find that I have yet again been reverted to the Tip.It Theme and cannot access the forums #-o

Somehow, half hour later, I come to check and the page succeeds in loading this time. Now I switch to Deflection yet again, despite how my selection refuses to stick any time my browser gets restarted, and I come to make this topic hoping somebody can figure out what is wrong with the Tip.It Theme and its sudden incompatibility with Firefox 3.6.3. I repeat, I have already wiped any cookies used by Tip.It (unless there is some alternate URL I'm not noticing that I should be clearing), and switching to a different skin makes no difference in the long run because it gets reset at the end of a browsing session.

I have tested, and I am unable to reproduce this error in Internet Explorer, but I hate using that and would be disappointed if that was my only way to see these forums :(. I just went to temporarily try the Tip.It theme in Firefox again, and it took roughly thirty refreshes before the page finally appeared, although it did not disappear with any further refreshes. A few minutes later, I tried again, and I received the same blank page five times before getting through. So apparently with patience the glitch does not really remove my access to these forums, but it does hinder it greatly and it does return on its own within a few minutes. Perhaps it's some incompatibility between the Tip.It Theme, Firefox, and most advertisements? I'm really not sure, but it's very annoying :-(

[Blutters]

The same thing has been happening to me! The weird thing is that I've used the Tip.It Theme since it came out and just changed yesterday to look at the other ones, then changed back, which is when this started.

[WolfieMario]

Interesting, it always seems to happen to me when I switch back to the Tip.It Theme too. Maybe it's safer to stay with the Tip.It Theme than to use another theme, since it automatically resets any time I exit/restart my browser? I still haven't managed to recreate it in Internet Explorer, in spite of how many times I switched themes there, but on Firefox it seems guaranteed whenever switching back to the Tip.It theme, which would explain why I get it any time I restart my browser (I still don't understand why it won't save my last theme, though). But the first time I had it was when I tried previewing a post which included Image, YouTube HQ, and YouTube HD tags, not while trying to switch to a different skin - that's what I tried after I saw the bug. Nonetheless, I'll try to stick with the Tip.It theme and see if the bug comes back on its own (that is, ignoring the first 50 refreshes I'll need to get it to work in the first place). It could be an issue in the skin swapping system as a whole - maybe some setting is cached by our browsers, used by the Tip.It Theme, and swapping to another theme clears this cache, causing issues when attempting to switch back? I'll attempt a hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) to see if that gets the theme working right away as apposed to countless soft refreshes.

EDIT: Okay, I have failed in several attempts to get the glitch again in Firefox (by changing themes and restarting my browser several times in different combinations). It actually remembers my last theme, but seems to forget it when the computer itself is shut off. As long as all I do is restart my browser, it gives me my previous theme. I won't waste time restarting my entire computer to do more testing, as I'm in the middle of working on a video, but I'll say anything tomorrow if I get the issue again. For now, I'm sticking with the Tip.It Theme until it seems to bug up on its own without me swapping themes.

EDIT 2: So much for that. Right after I hit "Save Changes" I got the bug again. At least I was able to confirm that a hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) will not make any difference whatsoever. Fortunately, as of yet, the brute force spamming of F5 has not failed me. Since the issue can occur regardless of whether or not I swap skins (it happened when I previewed a topic I was about to post, and it happened when I tried to edit a post (using the full editor, if this helps)), my previous theory fails, and the issue is likely exclusively somewhere in this skin's HTML. I hope site maintenance or whoever has the power to fix these issues takes a look soon!

Edited July 9, 2010 by WolfieMario

[tripsis]

It seems many people have been experiencing this issue, but right now we don't seem to know what the problem is :(