A new Notifications bug?

[Organized Chaos]

In the last 3-4 days, I’ve been experiencing a new glitch (I guess) with the notifications drop-down menu. I’m referring to the one you get when you click on the notifications bell icon. 

 

At first, it was alerting me to new notifications that weren’t actually new. The number that appears on the bell icon to indicate the number of new notifications was including old ones that I had already viewed. Some were a few hours old, all the way back to the previous day. But definitely ones I had viewed. 

 

That seems to have been corrected, but I’m still seeing an issue. In that drop-down menu, new notifications are indicated by bold font. In the past, the act of simply opening that menu would change all the new, bold notifications to light font. But that doesn’t happen anymore for me. They stay bold unless I click on each one individually. I don’t get the false number by the bell icon, but the notifications in the menu won’t switch to light after opening the menu. 

 

Has this been changed intentionally?

[Turtles06]

1 hour ago, Organized Chaos said:

That seems to have been corrected, but I’m still seeing an issue. In that drop-down menu, new notifications are indicated by bold font. In the past, the act of simply opening that menu would change all the new, bold notifications to light font. But that doesn’t happen anymore for me. They stay bold unless I click on each one individually. I don’t get the false number by the bell icon, but the notifications in the menu won’t switch to light after opening the menu. 

 

I can’t say that I recall one way or the other whether all the bold notifications turned light when I clicked on one of them, but they are all light (today) after I clicked on one, exited from the drop down menu, and then returned, except for some older notifications, which are still bold. So that is strange. 

Edited June 23, 2019 by Turtles06

[broberts]

9 hours ago, Organized Chaos said:

That seems to have been corrected, but I’m still seeing an issue. In that drop-down menu, new notifications are indicated by bold font. In the past, the act of simply opening that menu would change all the new, bold notifications to light font. But that doesn’t happen anymore for me. They stay bold unless I click on each one individually. I don’t get the false number by the bell icon, but the notifications in the menu won’t switch to light after opening the menu. 

 

Has this been changed intentionally?

 

I suspect so. The bolding indicates that the content has not been read (displayed). It really helps when one has five or six notifications as one immediately knows which have been read. The previous behavior made that difficult as one had to manually keep track of read and unread posts.

 

The new behavior gets two thumbs up from me. 

[Organized Chaos]

6 hours ago, broberts said:

 

I suspect so. The bolding indicates that the content has not been read (displayed). It really helps when one has five or six notifications as one immediately knows which have been read. The previous behavior made that difficult as one had to manually keep track of read and unread posts.

 

The new behavior gets two thumbs up from me. 

 

If this is intentional, I'm sure not fond of it. When I get multiple notifications that come from the same thread, I don't click on each one individually. For example, I might get 3 notifications that someone "reacted" to my comments and a couple from someone who quoted my comments, all from the same thread. I'll usually just click on the oldest one, open that thread in a new browser tab, and view the new content there. Then go back to my previous tab that still has the notification drop-down menu open, and repeat for new (bold) content in other threads. With the old method, all we had to do was open and close the notifications drop-down menu to switch them from bold (unread) to light (read). As of right now, I have about 20 notifications that are still in bold, meaning the system thinks they're still unread, but I've viewed all that content from within their respective threads. With the way it is now, those bold notifications are just showing a false representation of what it thinks I haven't viewed yet. And I apparently can't switch them over to light font (read/viewed) unless I click on each one individually. That's more work than it needs to be.

 

If this, in fact, is the new norm, at least give us the option to mark them as "all read."

Edited June 24, 2019 by Organized Chaos

[broberts]

I haven't been paying close attention, but it seems to me that when one has multiple notifications in the same thread, if one clicks on the oldest one then reads to the end of the thread all the bolding is removed for new posts. 

[Organized Chaos]

OK, now I know there's something buggy because I was logged on earlier today and I made sure all of my notifications were switched to light (viewed). When I logged on just now, several of those same ones have been reset to bold (not viewed).

 

@CC Help Jenn is the Help team aware of this?

[Turtles06]

@CC Help Jenn the bold/not bold seems to have been all over the map today. Earlier today, notifications that I had clicked on remained bold, and, more recently, I had a new notification pop up at the bell icon but nothing was bold.  (But there was indeed a new notification at the top of the list, it just wasn’t bold.)

[broberts]

The bolding on my notifications is working perfectly.

[Organized Chaos]

15 hours ago, broberts said:

The bolding on my notifications is working perfectly.

 

Between me and you, that makes one of us. I logged in for the first time today and was back to having bold notifications that were light last night.

[Turtles06]

@CC Help Jenn  Sorry to have to report this, but my notifications next to the bell icon are really wacky.   Recent bold ones that I've clicked on go light, but are bold again the next time I get a new notification and click on the bell icon.  They don't go light again until I click on that new notification.  Something is just not right.   Thanks.

[broberts]

4 minutes ago, Turtles06 said:

@CC Help Jenn  Sorry to have to report this, but my notifications next to the bell icon are really wacky.   Recent bold ones that I've clicked on go light, but are bold again the next time I get a new notification and click on the bell icon.  They don't go light again until I click on that new notification.  Something is just not right.   Thanks.

 

Clicking on a bolded notification does not necessarily mark it as read. All of the posts covered by the entry have to be viewed onscreen.

[CC Help Jenn]

This sounds like it would be related to cookies somehow - but not really sure.  I am having a hard time replicating.

 

What browsers do those of you experiencing this issue use?

 

[Turtles06]

45 minutes ago, broberts said:

 

Clicking on a bolded notification does not necessarily mark it as read. All of the posts covered by the entry have to be viewed onscreen.

 

When I click on a notification, it takes me directly to the post in question.  So the post has been read.  That's the issue -- the clicked notification greys out after I click on it (and read the post) -- but is bold again the next time I get a new notification. 

 

16 minutes ago, CC Help Jenn said:

This sounds like it would be related to cookies somehow - but not really sure.  I am having a hard time replicating.

 

What browsers do those of you experiencing this issue use?

 

 

Jenn, I'm having the problem across my devices -- Win10 laptop using Chrome, and iPad and iPhone using Safari.  Thanks for the help on this.

[broberts]

I don't think it could be a cookie issue as I get the same list on both desktop and phone. In fact, if I view a post on my phone and then drop the Notification list on my desktop it has been updated.

 

[Turtles06]

@CC Help Jenn  I just started the new thread linked below about Chrome not letting me log on to CC, and giving me this warning: "Insecure content blocked.  This page is trying to load scripts from an authenticated source."  Chrome will allow me to open and read threads as long as I'm not logged in.  But when I try to log on, I get no response.  [I'm posting here in Edge.]  I don't know if this is related to the notification issue, hence the new thread.  But I wanted to flag it here for you.  I've never had this problem viewing the CC Boards in Chrome, including earlier today.  Thanks for any help!

 

 

[AlanF65]

There are forum notifications (the bell) and browser notifications, if you follow the borwser notification the bell doesn't update

 

[AlanF65]

There are browser notification ( at the bottom of the screen) and forum notifications (the bell). Following a broswer notifcation won't update the bell, if you use the back button after following a link from the bell try refreshing your screen and see if the bell updates.

 

Edited June 27, 2019 by AlanF65

[Organized Chaos]

On 6/26/2019 at 8:00 PM, AlanF65 said:

There are browser notification ( at the bottom of the screen) and forum notifications (the bell). Following a broswer notifcation won't update the bell, if you use the back button after following a link from the bell try refreshing your screen and see if the bell updates.

 

Browser notifications are something different. This is Cruise Critics description of browser notifications: By enabling desktop notifications, we'll be able to tell you when there's new content even if you aren't active in this window. Check your browser help documentation to find out how to enable notifications for this site.

 

They have to be enable through your browser's settings and can alert you even when you're not viewing that window. For instance, I have browser notifications turned off for CC in Firefox. In my Cruise Critic Notification Settings, it indicates that they are turned off: It says "Browser notifications disabled" in a maroon box. But I still get those black bar notifications at the bottom of the screen. I never mess with those black bar notifications. Everything I've talked about in this thread was through the bell icon.

[Organized Chaos]

On 6/26/2019 at 12:00 PM, CC Help Jenn said:

This sounds like it would be related to cookies somehow - but not really sure.  I am having a hard time replicating.

 

What browsers do those of you experiencing this issue use?

 

 

I just cleared my cache and cookies. As of right now, all of my notifications in the bell icon drop-down menu are light. But I've seen this before and when I logged in the next day, they were bold again. But I'll log in sometime tomorrow and report back what I find. Thanks, Jenn.

[Organized Chaos]

Latest update @CC Help Jenn : Sorry, I forgot to mention I use the current version of Firefox. As noted in my post from last night, I cleared my browser's cache and cookies, then made sure all notifications (in the bell icon drop-down menu) appeared light (indicating all have been viewed). I just now logged in for the first time today. I had 5 new notifications, obviously marked as bold, no problem there. 5 of the old notifications remained light. And 15 of the old notifications that were light last night changed back to bold.

 

After messing around with it a bit, I think I realize what's going on. The 15 old notifications that were light last night, but changed back to bold today, are from threads that have new activity since last night. But not activity directed at me, such as someone quoting me. The thing is, I have every individual thread set to NOT notify me of new activity unless someone quotes me or "likes" my comment.

 

So this is something new that's happening. Whenever there's new activity in a thread that I follow, it is changing all of my OLD notifications back to bold. Even ones that are a few days old. It never used to do that and it makes it confusing. I've already viewed those notifications, so it shouldn't be changing them back to bold (non-viewed) just because there's other activity in the thread unrelated to my settings. I hope all of that makes sense.

[broberts]

1 hour ago, Organized Chaos said:

but changed back to bold today, are from threads that have new activity since last night

 

If you are following a thread this is the behavior I expect. I take it you only expect a notification for replies to your posts. For that behavior in Notification Settings you probably want to turn off

 

 

Edited June 28, 2019 by broberts

[Organized Chaos]

1 hour ago, broberts said:

 

If you are following a thread this is the behavior I expect. I take it you only expect a notification for replies to your posts. For that behavior in Notification Settings you probably want to turn off

 

Ugh! I swear I had everything set to not notify me unless I'm quoted or "liked." But the option you show there, as well as "New content for things I follow," were indeed turned on. I've turned them off and we'll see if it returns to what I was used to.

 

This just started happening last week, so something somewhere was tweaked without me actually doing it. Wouldn't be the first time. Dang gremlins!

[gnome12]

55 minutes ago, Organized Chaos said:

 

Ugh! I swear I had everything set to not notify me unless I'm quoted or "liked." But the option you show there, as well as "New content for things I follow," were indeed turned on. I've turned them off and we'll see if it returns to what I was used to.

 

This just started happening last week, so something somewhere was tweaked without me actually doing it. Wouldn't be the first time. Dang gremlins!

I have found that notification behaviour has changed a couple of times without my doing anything. It is like when they upgrade the site they reset a bunch of preferences.

[Organized Chaos]

It's still acting wonky. I have set everything to not notify me of new activity in a thread I follow, unless someone quotes or likes my comment. But my notifications are still being changed to BOLD from threads with new activity.

 

For example, I got a new notification that gnome12 quoted my post. It was bold, as it should be because I hadn't viewed it yet. But that activity also emboldened my old notification from 3 hours ago when broberts quoted my post. I had already viewed that one.

 

No matter what we have our notifications set to, our OLD notifications shouldn't be changed to bold for any reason. They're old and we've already viewed them. We should be getting new notifications of new activity in threads we follow. My old ones have never changed to bold like that until last week.

[Turtles06]

To add to the randomness, my new notifications at the bell icon are no longer bold. This is since last night. Everything is light type.