I assume it’s this:
Thanks Digital is the New Analog,
engineer_comp_geek, that is exactly what I was referring to.
I was unable to get to the SDMB to post until now.
Giraffe’s comment is consistent with what I’ve read on tapatalk’s tech site.
They even supply the lines that are the problem, with the suggested solution. If you are able to make this change (or submit it to TPTB), I could send you the info, however I would assume whoever would do this on the SDMB would want to research it themselves and not take my word for it.
But it does appear to be a simple change.
I don’t have the permissions to make these types of changes, but if you send me the info (you can PM it to me if you want) I’ll take a look at it and if I agree with the changes I can discuss it with someone who can make the changes.
I took a look at the script that gets called for the tapatalk popup here, and there is a cookie that it looks for. It looks to me that if the cookie is set then you shouldn’t get the popup, which was my experience when I tried it on my android.
There are only two things that the script looks for, it looks to see if it detects tapatalk, and then it looks to see if the cookie is set. If it detects tapatalk and the cookie isn’t set, then it displays the popup. Just before it displays the popup, it sets the cookie. It looks like the cookie expires after 90 days but I’m guessing that a popup once every 90 days would be a lot better than every time you go to the SDMB.
The script checks for iphone/ipod, ipad, kindle fire, android, and blackberry.
I don’t know if you’ve been down this road before, but you might try clearing your cookies. That will also clear out the cookie that has your login, so make sure you remember your SDMB password or you’ll have to recover it to log in. It will clear out cookies associated with other web sites as well. If the cookie is screwed up so that the script can’t set it properly, then that might explain the weirdness that you are seeing.
Also, if it can’t set the cookie for some reason (like you have cookies disabled) then you will always get the popup. The same thing will happen if you have something on your ipad that clears out cookies.
And again, send me their suggested solution and maybe a link to where you got it from so I can take a closer look at it.
FYI, engineer_comp_geek - I mentioned in another thread that I’ve actually had this pop-up on my Win7 laptop running Chrome.
It may be that there’s a bug in the decision tree, as opposed to the lack of a tracking mechanism. And all of us who have written code for the masses know that there’s going to be a user out there that somehow hits the rare bug…consistently. (And we know how much fun those are to track down, in our own worlds!)
I will send it to you in a PM as soon as I get a chance, probably tomorrow.
Just to let you know, though. I have done all of those things you’ve suggested, multiple times. I don’t get this error on any other message board I visit except this one. I’ve cleared cookies, my cache, and I don’t have cookies disabled.
I don’t know why I’m seeing this, but trust me… I am.
I will send you what I have found, including a link to the tapatalk tech site. One thing I can’t tell you is what version of software the SDMB is running, or any other technical details about tapatalk or the SDMB bulletin board software.
Thanks for your time.
That popup drove me nuts when I first used my iPad on the Dope.
Then I discovered the iCab Mobile browser for iOS. It has browser spoof settings, and when I switched its identification to Firefox 10 for Mac from Safari, it killed the popup that depends on a browser’s ID.
A while later, a popup appeared telling me that I’d have to update Firefox 10 because it has security holes, so I switched the spoof to Chrome 24, and all was well again.
(I hope no one connected to Tapatalk reads this).
Strangely, iCab lacks an iCab identification. Its default is Safari for iOS.
iCab Mobile blows the doors off Safari. Among other things, Adblock’s Easylist filters can be downloaded.
The author is right on top of bugs and iOS changes that affect iCab. The most recent iOS update caused it to crash after changing iCab’s settings, such as allowing cookies or not, and the author fixed it about a week later, despite there being a work-around.
It costs only $1.98 or something at the Apple store. Check out reviews of it on YouTube.
(I have no affiliation with iCab.)
For the benefit of anyone else reading this thread, I had done some research on my own, and Stink Fish Pot also sent me some links. There are several fixes for this listed in the tapatalk forums and elsewhere, but they all fall into two basic categories.
The first is to remove the script call from the SDMB. That would completely remove the popup. It would remove it for everyone though, even the popup’s intended audience. So really this is just getting rid of the popup completely instead of actually fixing anything associated with it.
The second fix is to change the way that the script sets the cookies. There are several variations on this, but the best one sets the cookie just before displaying the popup. That way the cookie gets set no matter what the user presses, and the cookie still gets set even if the user just closes the popup. Looking at the script on the SDMB, this fix has already been implemented.
That fix should take care of the problem, as long as cookies are working properly on the user’s computer. If your computer or device is having a cookie problem, then you’ll see the popup every time.
That said, there are a few messages on the tapatalk forums that indicate that they are still seeing the popup, even with the fix in place and cookies enabled.
What I then suggested to Stink Fish Pot was this:
However, the SDMB likes to abbreviate long links, so when Stink Fish Pot received the PM the link as shown on the screen was shortened and had […] in the link, breaking it when Stink Fish Pot copied and pasted it. Stink Fish Pot tried entering http://www.straightdope.com but predictably this ended up blocking the entire SDMB. When Stink Fish Pot removed this restriction, the popup no longer appeared. I don’t really have an explanation for that, which is why I am just presenting it here as-is.
If anyone else has this problem, you can try just blocking the tapatalk detect script above using whatever blocking system your particular device has available (as I said in an earlier post, this potentially affects androids, blackberries, and several other devices). If your device can block on a URL, then I think this will work, but I haven’t been able to confirm it. If your device ends up blocking on domain instead of URL, then this type of block will end up blocking the entire SDMB.
If anyone else has issues with this, please let us know.
I missed it the first time I looked at the script, but there’s a tapatalk notifier for chrome (according to the script), so the notification you got was intentional and was part of the script functioning properly.
I can’t imagine wanting to use tapatalk on my laptop to read SDMB. As a paying member, I expect to not get ads. I especially expect not to get pop-up ads.
Can you help me understand why tapatalk is treated differently?
Because it’s not an ad?
IF you already have tapatalk installed on your device the server serves a pop-up that says: “This website is tapatalk-compatible. Do you want to use your browser or the app you already bought and installed specifically for accessing sites like this?”
And barring malfunction, you answer the question once per lifetime.
In other words, it can be viewed as a logical function of the app you already installed on your device, although it’s actually implemented as a cooperative function between the client and the server.
And if you don’t already have the app installed on your device, you won’t ever see the popup suggesting you use it. Hardly seems like an ad to me.
I haven’t installed tapatalk on my laptop.
It an offer for a service. It’s a pop-up that takes up space on my screen. I pay to not have this happen.
I’ve only seen it the one time on the laptop.
It’s not that big a deal, and I’m not going to drop my membership over it or anything. But even if it only showed up when I had something else installed, I don’t see how it isn’t an ad.
My apologies for misunderstanding your situation. It’s definitely different from that of SFP, the OP
If indeed you don’t have tapatalk installed then I agree with you the popup constitutes an ad and is a violation of what I’d expect as a paying customer here. I’d be rightly annoyed to see that.
FWIW I’ve not seen it on my laptop nor my tablet. Yet. Neither of which have tapatalk installed.
Just wanted to post a thank you to engineer_comp_geek for helping me out with this problem.
As he noted, I no longer have the pop-up… which is fantastic! The strange thing is, I have no idea why.
I believe his work around will work. And I would suggest anyone dealing with the tapatalk pop-up try his solution.
As ECG pointed out, I put the incorrect info into my restrictions… When I took it back out and reset things back to normal, the pop-up disappeared. I have NOT used the correct info in my restrictions, but only because the pop-up no longer appears on my iPad. What I jiggled in my iPad, I have no idea. But I wouldn’t have made it this far without his help.
If (and when) the pop-up re-appears, I will make the change ECG suggests, and I will post the results to this thread.
If anyone else has this problem, and implements EGC’s fix, it would be great if you could let the board know your results via this thread as well.