'down for maintenance'

I'm sure most folx here, have tried to make a move, and got the RHP is down for maintenance page. I'm all in favour of being down for maintenance. I love the improvements that I've seen here to cater for *nix customers of late (mozilla - thanx russ). I extremely happy that no games have been lost and the forums run smoothly etc.

However, the 'down for maintenance' shows up some other problems.

Now, if all you were going to do is play e4, then no harm. But if you'd written a long witty epistle to your opponent, it can be fu^H^Hrather bothersome to lose it all.

But it needn't be this way. Plenty of other websites have the feature that if the website is unavailable (and does, or doesn't give you some 'down' page), you can hit the back button, and get the form that you were filling in, WITH ALL THE DATA INTACT. All you normally need to do, is hit submit again. However, on RHP, all the fields have been zeroed/blanked. Even the move is gone (no train smash though).

I know a teeny bit about HTML, browsers, HTTP and the POST method, and I know that they all make my wish come true. I suspect the problem here, is because java-wa^H^Hscript or some such is blanking the fields.

D'ya think that you laddens and lassens could have a thought about this?

TIA,
chippo

ya! 😠 right!

(or could you just publish the down-times (13:50 paris-time or something?)) 😕

I appreciate the problem. In fact, I'm amazed this is the first time that someone has mentioned it.

I will have a think about the best solution.

-Russ

for now I have taken to copying the text before I hit move. If it blanks out due to downtime I go back & paste it again.

Originally posted by Russ
In fact, I'm amazed this is the first time that someone has mentioned it.

why is there a downtime?

I've just seen a solution!

I was about to play a move (with witty epistle), and our firewall/proxy was down, and I got the 'nothing is working' web page. HOWEVER, the URL hadn't changed, and it still had the '?' in it, indicating it was a POST command with params. I just kept hitting 'Reload', and getting a dialog asking me whether I wanted to REPOST THE SAME PARAMS. I kept saying 'yes', and eventually my move (and epistle) got posted correctly!

So, I was thinking... what if you removed that 'alternate web site' that displays the 'down for maintenance' page? Then we'd all still have the possibility of reposting, until you came up again?

Cheers,
chippo