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GoComics not loading in app. #182

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Duhblach opened this issue Apr 3, 2024 · 56 comments
Open

GoComics not loading in app. #182

Duhblach opened this issue Apr 3, 2024 · 56 comments

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@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Apr 3, 2024

For a few days now none of the comics hosted by GoComics have loaded in the app. The only way to view them is to open the webpage for each. This includes comics like 9 Chickweed Lane, Baby Blues, and Zits.
@LucyGlo
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LucyGlo commented Apr 3, 2024

This is happening for me as well with Non Sequitur and Off the Mark, both at GoComics.

@oseparovic
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It looks like they're back. Perhaps some GoComics downtime. Let me know if you're seeing the same thing and I'll close this issue

@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Apr 3, 2024 via email

@oseparovic
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I am unable to reproduce this on any of our test devices. Did this issue start appearing recently? Can you please provide some more information:

  1. App version ("about" page in left-hand menu)
  2. Android version
  3. Are any other comics working?

@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Apr 4, 2024 via email

@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Apr 4, 2024 via email

@LucyGlo
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LucyGlo commented Apr 5, 2024

My app version is 1.8.6, Android version 14, with a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and I am still having to view in browser. I'll pick some other comics to add and test and come back with results.

@oseparovic
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oseparovic commented Apr 5, 2024 •
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For those following this issue, it looks like it only affects devices on Android 14 and up. I have pushed one potential fix specifically for GoComics. Kill the app and open it again to try it out. You MAY have to remove and re-add the offending comics but please try without doing so first. This will not require an app update

@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Apr 5, 2024 via email

@oseparovic
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We unpublished the app temporarily while we resolve this issue. Updating to https fixed the issue for my on my Android 14 test device running version 1.8.6. If that hasn't fixed it for you I'll have to investigate this further.

@Z350C001
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Z350C001 commented Apr 7, 2024

App Version: 1.8.6
OS Version: 14
Device: Samsung-S918U1

Right after I paid for the app, it stopped loading all comics haha.

@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Apr 7, 2024 via email

@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Apr 8, 2024 via email

@oseparovic
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oseparovic commented Apr 8, 2024 •
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For consistency lets test against one comic. Please test against 9 Chickweed Lane and let me know if you see this failed to load issue there. A lot of sites have different handling so this will help tackle one problem at a time.

Please also include the details at the bottom of your Pageflip info page. It seems that this issue is related to Android 14 but not all versions of it. My suspicion is that it's Samsung's custom version of Android 14. As an example this is my test device:

App Version: 1.8.6
OS Version: 14
Device: Google Pixel 7 Pro

And I'm not seeing any issues with 9 Chickweed Lane @Duhblach and @Z350C001 do you have issues with this comic in particular?

@Z350C001
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Z350C001 commented Apr 8, 2024

For consistency lets test against one comic. Please test against 9 Chickweed Lane and let me know if you see this failed to load issue there. A lot of sites have different handling so this will help tackle one problem at a time.

I updated my personal phone to:

App Version: 1.8.6 OS Version: 14 Device: Google Pixel 7 Pro

And I'm not seeing any issues with 9 Chickweed Lane @Duhblach and @Z350C001 do you have issues with this comic in particular?

9 Chickenweed Lane does not load for me :(

@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Apr 8, 2024 via email

@Hewtube
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Hewtube commented Apr 9, 2024

I recently updated to Android 14. That's when I lost access to GoComics comics.

@LucyGlo
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LucyGlo commented Apr 11, 2024

9 Chickweed Lane does not load for me.

@oseparovic
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After a lot of research it seems most likely that it is a problem specific to Samsung phones OR the GoComics web server. For those having issues, can you please try "Zits" instead to see if the same issue appears? Zits is on Arcamax so if the issue doesn't present there its likely a problem with GoComics servers

@Hewtube
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Hewtube commented Apr 11, 2024

can you please try "Zits" instead to see if the same issue appears? Zits is on Arcamax so if the issue doesn't present there its likely a problem with GoComics servers

I'm able to see Zits and read a few of them.

@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Apr 11, 2024 via email

@LucyGlo
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LucyGlo commented Apr 12, 2024

Zits works correctly for me.

@LucyGlo
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LucyGlo commented Apr 14, 2024

Non Sequitur and Off the Mark worked correctly today!

@Hewtube
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Hewtube commented Apr 14, 2024

Non Sequitur work for me too, but Sunday comic only. Still can't see the weekday comics.

@oseparovic
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Unfortunately it looks like this might be an issue with the GoComics server. Their server has had issues in the past and they've managed to resolve it. Hopefully it's something they address sooner rather than later.

I'll leave this issue open until they get to it

@LucyGlo
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LucyGlo commented Apr 21, 2024

Non Sequitur and Off the Mark worked correctly again today for the Sunday comic. In case it's relevant, Non Sequitur is in landscape mode Mon-Sat and portrait mode on Sundays, and Off the Mark is in portrait mode Mon-Sat and landscape mode on Sundays.

@Hewtube
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Hewtube commented Apr 21, 2024

It's working on GoComics' website so I'm not sure if waiting for GoComics to fix this problem is the way to go. Why would they care if your app is working?This is something Page Fl/p needs to fix or they're going to start losing users.

@oseparovic
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It's working on GoComics' website so I'm not sure if waiting for GoComics to fix this problem is the way to go. Why would they care if your app is working?This is something Page Fl/p needs to fix or they're going to start losing users.

I totally understand the frustration. If it doesn't affect how regular browsers access their site they have no incentive to fix the issue unless they have other affiliated services that would be affected. And you are right we are losing users and being flooded with negative reviews.

Unfortunately though, this app is just a pseudo-browser. When you view pages you're just viewing a slimmed down version of their site optimized for mobile viewing. We are not storing copies of comics on our own servers and serving them to users.

Whatever is wrong with their server we cannot just work around it from our end. As Lucy and some of our reviewers have pointed out GoComics randomly works on Sundays but not any other days. I have no idea what kind of mess they've gotten into to cause such a behaviour but from what I can tell nothing I can do seems to fix it

@WolfOhio
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It's working on GoComics' website so I'm not sure if waiting for GoComics to fix this problem is the way to go. Why would they care if your app is working?This is something Page Fl/p needs to fix or they're going to start losing users.

I totally understand the frustration. If it doesn't affect how regular browsers access their site they have no incentive to fix the issue unless they have other affiliated services that would be affected. And you are right we are losing users and being flooded with negative reviews.

Unfortunately though, this app is just a pseudo-browser. When you view pages you're just viewing a slimmed down version of their site optimized for mobile viewing. We are not storing copies of comics on our own servers and serving them to users.

Whatever is wrong with their server we cannot just work around it from our end. As Lucy and some of our reviewers have pointed out GoComics randomly works on Sundays but not any other days. I have no idea what kind of mess they've gotten into to cause such a behaviour but from what I can tell nothing I can do seems to fix it

This makes me sad. Your app is the only one that fills this need. Thank you for the explanation.

@Hewtube
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Hewtube commented Apr 24, 2024 •
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This makes me sad. Your app is the only one that fills this need. Thank you for the explanation.

Same here. GoComics had an app at one time, but for some reason, they shut it down.

@Z350C001
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It's working on GoComics' website so I'm not sure if waiting for GoComics to fix this problem is the way to go. Why would they care if your app is working?This is something Page Fl/p needs to fix or they're going to start losing users.

I totally understand the frustration. If it doesn't affect how regular browsers access their site they have no incentive to fix the issue unless they have other affiliated services that would be affected. And you are right we are losing users and being flooded with negative reviews.

Unfortunately though, this app is just a pseudo-browser. When you view pages you're just viewing a slimmed down version of their site optimized for mobile viewing. We are not storing copies of comics on our own servers and serving them to users.

Whatever is wrong with their server we cannot just work around it from our end. As Lucy and some of our reviewers have pointed out GoComics randomly works on Sundays but not any other days. I have no idea what kind of mess they've gotten into to cause such a behaviour but from what I can tell nothing I can do seems to fix it

Damn. :(

@oseparovic
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After some more research this almost certainly seems to be an issue with Samsung One UI. Samsung devices use a custom version of Android that they call One UI and it overrides a lot of root Android behaviours. There are tons and tons of articles about network connectivity issues specifically for people using Samsung One UI 6.0 (and maybe 6.1). These issues affect both their wifi connectivity and their carrier network connectivity it seems.

Example: https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Galaxy-S21/Poor-connectivity-after-One-UI-6-0-update/td-p/2821407

For those of you that are still experiencing problems, if you got to your phone's settings app, which version of Samsung One UI are you on?

@oseparovic oseparovic mentioned this issue Jun 9, 2024
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@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Jun 9, 2024 via email

@WolfOhio
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WolfOhio commented Jun 9, 2024 via email

@Hewtube
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Hewtube commented Jun 10, 2024

One UI version 6.1
Android version 14

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@nycmets
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nycmets commented Jun 10, 2024

One UI version 6.1
Android version 14

@JohnDgh
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JohnDgh commented Jun 14, 2024

Same. One UI version 6.1. Android version 14.
So, clearly it appears tied to this version. However, I am not experiencing any other networking instability other than PageFlip being unable to load GoComics, so I wonder if it may be an API change (for instance, more rigid API requirement than prior versions) as opposed to a networking bug. Nothing else is failing, or acting differently than prior OS versions, so not convinced this is a bug at the OS level vs PageFlip API compatibility bug that just showed up first under OneUI 6.1.

@WolfOhio
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WolfOhio commented Jun 15, 2024 via email

@sozifa
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sozifa commented Jun 17, 2024

No go comics but also no Samsung here pixel 8 android 14 go comics stopped showing in app last week

@Rich-AM
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Rich-AM commented Jun 17, 2024 •
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I've got a Samsung A53, Android 14, One UI 6.1.
The app started failing after a system update.
I've noticed the app works like it used to, but only on Sunday. Monday through Saturday the comics fail to load. It has been doing that for the last 3 weeks.

@oseparovic
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No go comics but also no Samsung here pixel 8 android 14 go comics stopped showing in app last week

I have a pixel 7 pro and haven't seen this yet. What build number do you have for your pixel 8 + android 14

I am currently on AP1A.240505.005

@sozifa
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sozifa commented Jun 18, 2024 via email

@brunoflavio-com
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@oseparovic is there anything we can do to help you diagnose this in oneui 6.1 / android 14? If there's a way to provide you with debug logs let us know please.

@oseparovic oseparovic mentioned this issue Jun 26, 2024
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@oseparovic
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They finally released an updated Emulator for Android that can reproduce this issue. I think I was able to fix it. I have a build sitting in Google review right now that should hopefully be out in the next few hours-days depending on their review backlog. Once you are able to update the app through Google Play please report if it fixes the issue for you!

For those of you interested in what happened - it was a 2 part problem which is what made it so confusing.

Part 1:

I've been trying to figure out forever what could possibly be the difference between GoComics and other sites. The clue was in this bizarre little detail that was mentioned by a few people further up in this discussion. GoComics still works on Sundays. I had a look at the images for various strips on their site and found a an oddity - for every day of the week EXCEPT Sunday the strips they upload are actually GIFs not images like JPG or PNG! GIF files are made up of a set of frames which play in a loop something like this:
1fba5de71dad3657ffd94ef221732bcc

You may have noticed that none of the Comic strips you view are actually animated like the example above. That's because the GIFs on GoComics are just a single frame. Effectively making them appear as images to the user.

Part 2:

While this was an interesting oddity, it wasn't anything new. GoComics hasn't changed their image hosting in forever and Pagef/p also hasn't changed in the way that images are processed in a long long time.

Enter Android 14 AP2A.

One of the most common ways that Images are loaded in Android is that you "connect" to a URL to obtain data and then "stream" this data into some form of Android image container. The app uses an Android function called decodeStream to read this stream of data and create a Bitmap (our image container). This Bitmap is then loaded into the Pagefl/p UI where the user sees it.

Well for some reason as of Android 14 AP2A, this Android function can no longer process GIF data. It worked this way for years but suddenly something internal to Android changed.

Solution

The way images are processed in the app had to change completely. Now GIFs have their own explicit handling separate to regular images. One side effect of this is that potentially actual multi-frame animated GIFs might work in the app now? We will see.

If it seems like this patch works I'll finally close this issue and we can put this annoying chapter behind us

@Hewtube
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Hewtube commented Jun 26, 2024

Hopefully this works. It'll be nice to get the comics back, and what a backlog to go through!

@WolfOhio
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WolfOhio commented Jun 26, 2024 via email

@WolfOhio
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WolfOhio commented Jun 27, 2024 via email

@Rich-AM
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Rich-AM commented Jun 27, 2024

Mine is working as well
Thank you!!

@JohnDgh
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JohnDgh commented Jun 27, 2024

Same here - latest version fixed loading GoComics weekday pages! You should be able to republish the app now.

@brunoflavio-com
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Also working again for me on a Samsung S21 / Android 14.

Thank you!

@Z350C001
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Z350C001 commented Jun 27, 2024 via email

@LucyGlo
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LucyGlo commented Jun 27, 2024 via email

@JohnDgh
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JohnDgh commented Jun 27, 2024

How do I download the update?

Until it is republished for all, the easiest is to go to Settings->Apps, find and open the PageFl/p app in the app list, and click on App details in store. You should be able to update from there.

Alternately, if you go to the Play Store menu->Manage Apps & Devices->Manage, you should be able to find PageFlip under your installed apps and update from there.

@Z350C001
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Z350C001 commented Jun 28, 2024 via email

@nycmets
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nycmets commented Jun 28, 2024 •
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I think this change was on the backend as I didn't have to update the app but the failing comics are now coming in great, thanks for all your work! I noticed the save functionality is gone as you can't save a gif directly but that's a super minor issue.

Thanks!

@Duhblach
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Duhblach commented Jun 29, 2024 via email

@oseparovic oseparovic mentioned this issue Jul 1, 2024
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