Anyone else not able to use touchstones since the new features were added

I've posted at least five book titles in messages over the past few days, and no touchstones are showing up. (Yes, I do know how to mark a touchstone with brackets.) Among them are:

Elizabeth I by Margaret George
The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Forster
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch
Lady Chetterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

As you will undoubtedly see, no touchstones are coming up. None are showing in the pane on the right as I type this message.

Elizabeth I
Jamrach's Menagerie
Lady Chatterley's Lover

There don't seem to be any copies of Forster's book catalogued here. At least there are none listed on her author page.

You've misspelled "Chatterley", which may be why that one didn't work.

The Soldier's Wife - did you mean Margaret Leroy?

Lady Chatterly's Lover

(Still don't expect it to work.)

Forster's books are listed individually, at least this one and some others, I've been to the page.

Why is this working for you but not for me?

I'll check back later--tornado warning, and it just got really, really dark out there.

> 4

Again, you've misspelled "Chatterley".

If you follow the link to Forster's page, you'll see that title isn't listed. And if you do a search for The Soldier's Wife, it doesn't come up. Where are you seeing it?

Why is this working for you but not for me?

I don't know!

tornado warning, and it just got really, really dark out there.

Criminy! Stay safe!

[Lady Chatterly's Lover] = Lady Chatterly's Lover

Even mispelled, this should get a touchstone.

Browser? OS?

5> Lady Chatterley's Lover--and I'll bet there is still no touchstone.

I searched The Soldier's Wife in the upper right search box. It did come up; in fact, I copied the jacket cover to post on my profile page.

No tornado, but that was a scary storm--60 mph winds and ping pong ball-sized hail. I've got a lot of branches to pick up tomorrow, and two of my hosta were blown flat and might not recover.

7> IE 9, Windows 7. Always worked before the changes.

How very strange. And you're definitely not including anything else in the touchstones except the title and square brackets?

I'd think not, but it's always worth double checking.

No--just as I've always done, the title with square brackets. Doesn't matter what title, no touchstones:

Gone with the Wind
Lonesome Dove
Hamlet

Very weird. Like I said, I didn't think so, but just in case...

Have you tried another browser?

3> Somehow I missed that earlier--yes, my bad, it's The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy.

But still no touchstone.

OK, trying a different browser.

Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Well, that's strange . . . . so it must be an IE problem?

I suspect it might have something to do with the Ajax code and IE9, yeah.

Well, at least it's been narrowed down!

ETA: is that an electric can opener that kitten is sitting on?

16> Yes--he knew where his food was coming from (and now he weighs almost 15 pounds!).

Mine seem to be okay for now, but they have been a bit patchy since that last problem in (when was it) February(?). I'm working off, variously, iPad, iPhone or Firefox.

@Cariola - I had a similar problem posting from Firefox on Windows XP, and accidentally discovered that the touchstones showed up as soon as I deleted something or typed a backspace in the edit box - do you get the same thing? Tim said he was waiting for independent confirmation before following it up...

Okay. We'll take a look at it in IE9. Thanks for the report.

19> I had no problem getting touchstones to work with Firefox, just IE9. I did try editing the messages and reentering titles with brackets, but they still don't show up using IE9.

We're working on it. Unfortunately we only have one IE9 machine, and it's mine, not @ConceptDawg, who wrote the code there. Anyway, we'll get to it soon.

OK, I'm just glad to know that someone is trying to remedy the problem.

@Citizenjoyce says here that it's fixed. Is it fixed for you? I'm thinking no.

Well, let's give it a try:

Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hamingway

Nope, not fixed.

#22 by @timspalding> You ever use VMs for test environments? Great way to do it when you have a crapload of types of systems like with browsers and OSes.

>27 brightcopy:

Yeah. We have Parallels for all other Windows systems. We couldn't get it to install Windows 8.

Due to a bug, this thread has lost its subject. Anyone remember what it was?

#28 by @timspalding> Just get yourself one windows machine and use it to run all the VMs you need. Easy-peasy.

#29 by @timspalding> It was "Anyone else not able to use touchstones since the new features were added?"

Wow, that's bad: a bug bugging a post about a bug . . .

O Pioneers!

(Just checking.)

Okay, added the title "Anyone else not able to use touchstones since the new features were added?"

Checking....

To Kill A Mockingbird

Nope --- using IE9

I haven't posted a title for several days. Just did--still no touchstones.

I suspect it's the Windows environment rather than IE9 - I see the bug under both FF3.6 and IE6 under XP Pro, but I've had no problems at all on my Mac at home.

36>I don't think so. Windows users are able to post with touchstones if their browsers are earlier than I9. And I can post them using Firefox 4.0, so I don't think it's Windows7.

>37 Cariola:

In support of your observation, I'm fine on Windows 7 with IE8.

#36 by @thorold> I suspect it's the Windows environment rather than IE9 - I see the bug under both FF3.6 and IE6 under XP Pro, but I've had no problems at all on my Mac at home.

Don't think it's that simple. XP Pro/FF 3.6.17 here and no problems with touchstones. But it's interesting that you do see the problem in such environments.

>39 brightcopy:
Or what I'm seeing could be a quite separate problem - e.g. due to something or other getting blocked on the office network. The fact that it's the same on FF and IE6 suggests that it's not the browser itself. Since I've worked out that typing a backspace kickstarts the touchstone lookup, it's not a major problem, particularly if no-one else is having trouble with XP Pro.

I think that it is IE9 which is the problem. I have had to revert to a virtual version of XP in order to get the touchstones to work.

I have also had a problem posting on my google-supported blog and on the FAQ it seems that google has a problem with anything over IE6 so we are not alone here. However, the virtualbox works for the blog too so at least I have a temporary solution.

I hope they figure it out soon. It's a pain to have to remember to change browsers to use LT.

I am quite sure that it is IE9. I can't even force touchstones on this computer which has Win 7 and IE9.

No problems with my other three and a half computers (the half is virtual XP)

I hope somebody is still trying to fix this. It has been almost two weeks since the issue was reported. I hate having to remember to use a different browser to post to LT if I want touchstones to show up.

I just found this thread and also hope someone is still trying to fix this. I haven't been able to use the touchstones for weeks using IE9.

Yes, the problem has been assigned to Casey, Tim says (elsewhere).

#46 Thanks for letting me know. This is the first time I've felt compelled to find out what's going on with a bug since it's so frustrating to enter the touchstones and get nothing.

47> Couldn't agree with you more. I'm glad to know that someone is still working on it and they didn't just figure we'd all have to use another browser. Most of us have actually just given up on using touchstones--which doesn't help when you want people to link to the book or your review.

While I was pleased to find out that my problem is not of my own making, it is nonetheless frustrating to sit down at my shiny new computer and not be able to enter touchstones. Windows 7, IE9. I hope the fix is coming soon, since the mentions of using another browser leave me slightly panicky - there is only ONE internet, right? ;-) Seriously, though, if I load firefox, will that work?

ETA - I tried using Google Chrome - already loaded on the new computer - and it seems to work. The other problem I was having with IE9 is that I couldn't edit just-posted messages. Older messages can be opened and edited, but not recent ones. But here I am on Google Chrome editing away.

Yeah. Unlike antivirus, multiple browsers play very nicely together - think of them as different windows on the Internet. The outside (Internet) doesn't change, it's just that you can see a different angle through the living room, bedroom, kitchen window (and I am _not_ suggesting which browser is which!). A good few people actually use a couple browsers simultaneously in order to be logged on to the same site in two different accounts. Glad you had one easily available to work with.

49> I'm in the same position. Bought a brand new computer in late April and can't use touchstones with IE9. Firefox will work. I just don't want to make it my default browser, and I never remember to open it until AFTER I've tried to post a touchstone. This is the only site where I can't use IE9, and I'm really getting tired of having to do something special to use LT. I hope LT techs haven't decided that making members change browsers is an acceptable "fix."

So now I'm also having trouble editing posts, as described in Message 49. Never happened until yesterday.

Hello? LT? Is anyone out there working on this problem?

It's been a looong time since I've been able to use the touchstones and I'd love to know what progress is being made on fixing this bug.

We have a whole list of known IE9 bugs that we have to tackle. Sorry for the delay.

Good to know that you haven't forgotten us!

Okay, touchstones should now work on IE9.

Technical point: This is a VERY tricky change. Basically we had to upgrade a core JavaScript library called "Prototype." Doing that caused some OTHER things to break that we saw. It's likely that there are other breaks because of this, but we can't detect JavaScript breaks across the site because they don't execute on our servers, but on your browser.

So, we'll see. If a lot of problems roll in that we can't fix, we'll have to roll this back.

I can't save CK edits in at least some fields - disambiguation notes for one. (IE9)

ETA nor Canonical Title and Nationality - probably all fields. Attempt to edit Gender still behaving as before.

CK is fixed. Sorry, Chris reported it in another thread.

You ever run your javascript code through JSLint or Javascript Lint? Might possibly help, though if you don't typically do it you may be drowned in too much other gripes to notice the problems. Just a thought.

Yeah. I suspect if we started writing it this week we would.

I'm actually amazed we managed to upgrade to the newest version of Protoype without more problems.

Yeah, I know that's true. As far as Prototype, they're definitely doing something right. I hate it when big libraries decide to break all kinds of things, despite the justifiable howls of protests.

Speaking of JSLint which, you ever listen to this talk by Doug Crockford (creator of JSON and JSLint, among other things) called "Javascript: The Good Parts"? While some of it is remedial, I found it pretty interesting. Showed me a few tricks I didn't quite grasp fully (closures), and gave me some tips on how best to format the code to avoid the javascript interpreter auto-inserting semicolons and curly braces where you don't want them. It's an hour long, but definitely worth it.

#56 Tim, thank you and everyone else who had a part in fixing the touchstone problem. It's so nice to have them back again. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the fix doesn't cause any significant problems.

Hi I use http://nightly.mozilla.org/ Firefox Nightly Builds
Troubleshooting Information:
 Firefox
 Version: 8.0a1
 User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:8.0a1) Gecko/20110721 Firefox/8.0a1

Touchstones do not work for me.

Tell Mozilla that - that's what a beta's for, to check where it fails. 8?!? They're jumping way ahead...

>63 gangleri: >64 jjmcgaffey:> see poor help at authorname search That topic is about failing search and links to "blank / empty" author pages caused beecause of canonnical, legal or official CK names.

One can see that removing referencing author urls during save will completely change the output and meaning between "Edit and Preview" and final rendered page.

Conlusion: absolut author references should be preserved as before.

I'm going to close this one. Touchstones have been working for us for a while. ;)
If you're still having the same problems feel free to comment.