Web Paint-by-Number Forum
Topic #218: Graying out finished lines
By Clarabelle Munk (BarbRock)

#1: Clarabelle Munk (BarbRock) on Mar 30, 2010

I scanned through the topics, but didn't see this issue, so.........

When I do big puzzles, I gray out the clue numbers so I can keep my place more easily. Sometimes this saves with the puzzle and sometimes not. Doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what saves.

Is there a way I can make the puzzles save with my place- savers intact?

Thanks
#2: Gator (Gator) on Mar 30, 2010
I have used IE, Firefox, and now Chrome. So far, I am having the grayed out clue numbers restoring properly with Chrome. I had issues with both IE and Firefox. I also noticed that it seems to happen more commonly on the larger puzzles. Not sure what browser you are using, but if you are not using Chrome, I would suggest that you try it for a little bit to see if that helps.
#3: Teresa K (fasstar) on Mar 30, 2010
Jan did cover this in another topic, just not sure which topic that might be.
#4: Jan Wolter (jan) on Mar 31, 2010
I guess this is another thing I need to check into. I don't do a lot of big puzzles and haven't noticed this.

When you reload a puzzle, you usually get your history reloaded too, so you can do undo's. As you undo, you will notice that gray-outs undo too. That's because gray-outs are recorded as part of the undo history. When you reload a saved puzzle, it is supposed to scan through the undo history to regenerate the gray-outs.

However, undo histories are big. It includes a list of every cell you clicked on while solving the puzzle. If I store that forever for every puzzle anyone ever solved, then I get into big problems with the size of the database. So, there is a thing that goes through the database and erases undo histories for puzzles that have not been played for a while. I don't recall how often this happens, but that's one thing that could cause gray-outs to be lost on puzzles that have not been worked on for a long time.

However, there seem to be issues on other puzzles too, which sounds like a bug that I need to get around to looking at.
#5: Joe (infrapinklizzard) on Mar 31, 2010
This often happens to me in both firefox and safari on puzzles that I am currently working on. As in: work, save, do a few pixels, restore = greys gone.

Every once in a while (after solving the puzzle) I run through the undo/redo list to see a "movie" of the solving of the puzzle. Often during that the clues do not end up all greyed out at the end.
#6: Byrdie (byrdie) on Mar 31, 2010
I've noticed an anomally in the greying out of clues on large puzzles as well but I think, at least in my case, it's easily explained. The clues in the puzzle are a specific font set and, when a clue is "greyed out," it's actually a new character in the font set. At least as near as I can figure.

Since puzzles are solved in java, the solving actually is resident on my (your) machine, but (again as near as I can tell) the font isn't loaded with it and the puzzle will actually have to go back to the website to retrieve the new character. With large puzzles and especially with the error checker running at the same time, that can sometimes slow down the process and even, on occaision, cause it to fail. In cases where it fails, I get a black box where the greyed out clue should be.

What I've found is that after I've saved the puzzle if I leave it and reload it, it will load with all the clues correctly marked as the solution to that point is what's saved.

My guess is that the above examples are done while error checking is on and it is interfering with the correct loading and reaplacing of characters from the font set.

While I'm computer savvy, I'm not necessary fluent in computerese and so what I've said is in layman's terms. It's also my observation of the circumstances and may not be entirely correct ... if correct at all.
#7: Jan Wolter (jan) on Apr 1, 2010
I think the problem Martin is seeing is unrelated to the problem other people are seeing. But I could be wrong.

The clue number aren't actually done with a font. They are little square images with hand-drawn numbers in them. But you're basically right otherwise. The tiles aren't loaded from the server until they are needed, the ones with gray backgrounds in particular aren't usually needed until late, and if your net connection is being very slow on is non-existent when they are needed, then they will fail to load.

Error checking shouldn't interfere with tile loading.

Oh, and while I'm picking nits, this site doesn't use Java, which is a language developed by Sun that you need a plugin for. It uses Javascript which is a completely different, unrelated language developed by Netscape that is built into all browsers. The "Javascript" name is stupid and confusing, so the committee that wrote the standard for it renamed it. With the genius of committees, they called it "ECMAscript", so everybody kept calling it "Javascript" and we'll be stuck with the confusion forever.
#8: Byrdie (byrdie) on Apr 1, 2010
I am unconfused. <smile> Your explanation makes sense although I don't typically have a slow connection and it only happens on large puzzles. Not arguing, I'm sure it's probabaly connection related somewhere along the pipeline.

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