Page updates not always being notified
Wed, 04/29/2009 - 22:21 — rgifford
I have noticed since upgrading to v3 that page updates are sometimes not notified. I have notifications set to display until cancelled but I sometimes notice that the notification arrow (bottom right) has gone purple without there having been a pop-up. There have been other instances where neither have happened but I know that pages have changed based on manual checks.
I'm happy to provide further details if someone can advise what is wanted.
Re: Page updates not always being notified
If there are lots of pages to be scanned, the arrow will turn blue after the first change is detected, but the popup will only be displayed after all of the pages have been scanned. If there are lots of pages, or they are slow to load, this can take a while.
Regarding changes that aren't detected at all, is this because the page doesn't get automatically scanned, or is the page being scanned but the change ignored? If you notice this happening again, check when the page was last scanned (this information is displayed in the header when you click on a page in the updatescanner sidebar).
Re: Page updates not always being notified
Sorry for the delay replying, I have been trying to see what is going on.
There are occasions where I have had a dark blue arrow bottom right but no pop-up. I have had occasions where I have had more than one pop-up - '4 pages updated' immediately followed by 'a page has been updated' for example. I don't know how often this happens because I only notice if I happen to be looking at the bottom right of the screen at the right time.
I have just checked the last scan date for all of my checked pages and all have been scanned recently. Every page is showing changes highlighted. Some of these changes aren't recent but some I have certainly never been notified about. I always look at notified changed pages by clicking the icon to open all changes in new tabs. It would appear that some changed pages aren't being highlighted or opened.
I'm currently using 3.0.3
Re: Page updates not always being notified
A few comments that might help:
* If a page changes, but the change is less than the "Change Threshold", you won't receive any notification and the page won't go bold in sidebar. But the change will still get highlighted in yellow.
* Every minute, updatescanner checks to see if there are any pages that have not been scanned for x minutes (where x is the autoscan time). It collects a list of these pages and scans them all. During the scan, if a change is detected then the page appears bold in the sidebar and the arrow in the statusbar turns blue. Once all pages have been scanned, a notification pops up if any have changed. The next minute the process is repeated.
* If at 10:00 there are 3 pages due to be scanned and 2 are changed, you'll see a popup. If at 10:01 another page is due to be scanned and it has changed, you'll see another popup.
* If you are seeing any pages that get updated but not detected (ie. the item in the updatescanner sidebar doesn't go bold), make sure that your change threshold is set small enough.
* A good test page for this sort of thing is http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/timer.pl (you'll need to make sure you don't set "ignore changes to numbers" when testing with this)
Re: Page updates not always being notified
Thank you for these notes which help. I am certainly sometimes not seeing a pop-up at all (which I have defined as staying till cancelled) but having bold items in the sidebar. I have allowed enough time for the scan to finish but can live with this.
However, your notes have raised another question. I have 40 pages on my list which are generally scanned hourly. It takes longer than a minute to scan the full list so there is usually a different last time on the fisrt and last items in the list. I expect that there are sometimes more than two times but haven't checked.
My question is that if a site is scanned at 10:00 and changes are found and identified. I then don't look at those changes for the next hour at which point it is scanned again. What are the potential outcomes of this scan if there are:
No changes since the scan at 10:00
Minor (below threshold) changes since 10:00
Major changes since 10:00
I don't think there is anything that would need fixing from this but being aware of the potential outcomes would help me use the tool.
If I close Firefox without looking at a bold item in the sidebar, is the bold indication persistent to the next session or would it get overwritten by the first scan on next Firefox startup?
Re: Page updates not always being notified
>What are the potential outcomes of this scan if there are:
>No changes since the scan at 10:00
>Minor (below threshold) changes since 10:00
>Major changes since 10:00
For all of the above, you won't receive a new notification at 11:00.
If you don't respond to a notification by viewing the changes, you won't get notified of future changes to that page until you view the changes. Any additional changes just get highlighted as they are detected (ie. the New Page gets updated, and the Old Page remains the same).
>If I close Firefox without looking at a bold item in the sidebar, is the bold indication persistent to the next session
>or would it get overwritten by the first scan on next Firefox startup?
Bold indication (and blue arrow in statusbar) only get reset when you view the changes (or "mark as visited"). So they will persist from session to session.