MS persistently won’t load for a customer Answered
Frustration post: Has anyone run into the issue where MS persistently won’t load for a customer, and it’s not because of javascript being disabled? Have you ever been able to identify what the problem is, specifically? I now have two customers with the issue. They are both teachers using school-issued computers on a school network. I’m trying to troubleshoot from a great distance, but I still don’t know if it’s something on their computer (like a plugin? Antivirus software?) or something on their school network (firewall?)
I’m dealing with non-tech people with a finite degree of patience, and probably a bunch of other stuff they need to be doing. Any suggestions for what, exactly, I should be asking them to look for? Their IT support crew have so far been as helpful as the stereotypes: Switch it off/on, clear cache, reset password, deny that anything is wrong. 🤯
FYI I have suggested taking the computer home and trying on home network, and taking non-school device to use on school network — to see if we can narrow it down to device vs network. I’m probably not communicating it well enough, but haven’t been able to get them to do this yet. One did manage to use a phone on a home wifi, but didn’t really learn much from that. 😅
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29 comments
its probably a firewall thing. Schools are known to have strict security measures. Without being at the school its really hard to tell. Some schools even block all cookies.
I like your idea about trying different devices and networks
One IT guy has said that “nothing should be blocking”, but I don’t know how much thought or effort he put into that diagnosis.
Thats when you ask them “So you are not keeping kids safe on the internet?“. They probably are but the IT person doesnt know about it.
using your idea should narrow things down a bit
I’m curious if their firewall (or whatever is doing the blocking) is blocking the actual script from loading or blocking api requests. Or both 🤔
A few years ago we had a user with a similar problem. It was actually Dell the computer company. MemberStack wouldn’t load on their company computers. Their IT department ended up having to add the MemberStack domain on an allow list.
One of my ladies is on a Dell computer. I can ask the other one.
Oh, I read that wrong, but might still stand!
Ah so that shouldn’t matter.
Dell was just an example of a company that had a firewall blocking us.
But using a Dell computer outside the Dell company shouldn’t be a problem.
Let me reach out to some other companies that also have scripts to see if they’ve had similar issues and if they know a solution.
That would be great. I think the main issue is being able to go to the IT team with a specific question or request or example of a modification, so that they know that it’s not just user incompetence, and they can move on from telling them to switch it off/on.
“is blocking the actual script from loading or blocking api requests.” <== Gated content is still gated. Does that help?
are they not able to stay logged in?
if gated content is working the script should be working. If they are unable to login its probably a cookie issue
Gated content is still gated and they cannot access it without logging in.
Hidden content is NOT hidden. They see both “login” and “logout” in the navigation, when one should be hidden with data attributes.
Logins / password resets do not work. They submit the form and it behaves like a normal webflow form, and I get an inbox full of nonsense.
oh interesting. the document.querySelectorAll() we use to get the data attributes may not be supported. Can you find out what browser and version they are using?
document.querySelectorAll() is a DOM Level 3 (2004) feature.
I can check. I know one is using Chrome, which has supported that feature since 2010. I’d assume that school devices would be using browsers less than 10 years old though. Am I assuming too much? 🤣
there are a lot of unknowns which does make this a hard thing to track down. Thank you for your patience. All the info you provide helps out a lot.
Here’s my update this morning: “We have done everything humanly possible. He has completely opened every filter and everything from my computer. He whitelisted the website and has allowed everything, but it is still not working. Ironically, I can get in from a student’s chrome book so it’s not the network.” <== Any idea where we should be looking now?
Hi Aletta thanks for the update.
Would your user be open to getting on a call with us? It would be awesome if we could do a live debugging session with them.
If they are down, we’d love to return the favor by getting them a gift card to their favorite place or restaurant 😃
What a great offer! I’ll check with her (and probably her IT guy). Thanks!
She’s keen. She’s available 2:15pm EST tomorrow if that works. Otherwise I can share a calendar or something. She says it might just be her (no tech guy) but she knows her way around a computer if you tell her what to click 🙂
Okay sounds good!
I’ll send you a calendar invite if you could add her to it as well.
invite sent
Sweet. I’ve sent her the link. Latest update: It turns out that gated content is, in fact, not gated anymore and she is able to access everything as if she has a membership. 😬
Oh my. I think I’ve just figured it out. If I completely disable all cookies, I can replicate the situation perfectly. I can also access all the material without a membership.
ahhhhhh interesting!
I’ll try to replicate on my end too.
I wonder if she also has cookies disabled 🤔
Yes, that is what I’m wondering. I have asked, but it’s getting late there so I might not get an answer tonight.
If this is the case, it’s a pretty easy workaround for the whole MS system. Is there a cookie check I can implement (like the javascript check) to block access if cookies are disabled?
got it, yep I was able to replicate the issue as well.
Regardless if it’s your users issue, I’ll work on a fix for that specific problem.
and yes, we could easily work up a custom code snippet that checks to see if cookies are disabled.
Awesome. It really would not surprise me if that’s the problem, given that it’s a school we’re talking about. I would put a whole five bucks on it. 🤑
What would you like to happen if a website has cookies disabled?
Would you expect MemberStack to display a message saying something like “Cookies are required for this website to work”
It would be good if I could specify a page to send people to with a bit more information. So maybe a default message from MS with an optional redirect page?
Got it! Yep that makes sense.
I’ll work on this tonight.
Ace, thanks. I’ll let you know if my customer finds this to be her problem too.
Sound good thanks.
I’ll send you a code snippet you can add to your site that will redirect users to a specific page if cookies are disabled. 💪
Al Mazlin Alrighty here you go! I recommend adding this to the footer of your site.
Change /please-enable-cookies to whatever you want your “Please enable cookies
url to be 🙂
I think this will be a good solution till we come up with something better.
function checkCookiesAndLocalStorage() {
try {
// Check if cookies are enabled
const cookiesEnabled = navigator.cookieEnabled;
if (cookiesEnabled === false) throw new Error("Cookies Disabled") window.localStorage.setItem("isEnabledTest", "test") window.localStorage.removeItem("isEnabledTest")} catch(err) {
window.location.href = "/please-enable-cookies"
}
}
checkCookiesAndLocalStorage()
Nice. I chucked it on important pages and it seems to do the job 🎉
Cookie trick doesn’t seem to have worked for this lady. She can still see everything. But all other devices behave normally. Debug still required 😞
Okay! It was worth a try.
https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/109539
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