Random appearance of Foreground skin when not logged in

Forum for all users to discuss the implementation and operation of the ChoralWiki at CPDL
Locked
MandyShaw
Posts: 79
Joined: 28 May 2007 09:11
Location: Bath, England

Random appearance of Foreground skin when not logged in

Post by MandyShaw »

For several weeks we have been seeing the Foreground skin pop up on random pages, but only when not logged in.
The next CPDL page accessed always returns to Vector.
It is possible that this only happens when the most recently logged in account is Christopher's (cjshawcj) - I have not yet seen it in relation to mine (MandyShaw).
It happens on at least 2 computers, and in both Edge and Chrome.
Thanks
Mandy Shaw
choralia
Site Admin
Posts: 2924
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 19:57
Location: Rome, Italy
Contact:

Re: Random appearance of Foreground skin when not logged in

Post by choralia »

Due to the increasing number of users accessing through mobile devices, we are currently experimenting the Foreground skin as the default skin for anonymous users that access through smartphones or tablets. Logged-in users always receive the skin selected in their user preference settings.

The detection of the device type (i.e., smartphone/tablet vs. desktop) is based on a php class documented here.

If the Foreground skin shows up on a desktop randomly, the most likely reason is a MediaWiki cache issue: probably a mobile device accessed the same page when it was cached for the last time, so the Foreground skin is displayed to anonymous users until the cache for that page expires.

The above needs to be confirmed, though. I'll investigate it further. I tried to visit dozens of random pages anonymously, and it has never happened to me so far.

Max
Locked