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Why was the blue background-color removed on the post notice block?

Before

before - there's a blue background on a closed question post notice

From web.archive.org

Now:

after - The post notice background is white and the outline is black instead of blue From The definitive guide to form-based website authentication

Additional information:

Laptop specs

System Version
OS macOS Cataline 10.15.7
Browser Google Chrome Version 91.0.4472.164 (Official Build) (x86_64)

Phone specs

System Version
OS Android 11
Browser Google Chrome Version 90.0.4430.91 (Official Build) (64-bit)
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21
  • 2
    Yeah, I noticed that as well but was on a deleted question. I thought it was a one-of error / glitch.
    – rene
    Jul 22, 2021 at 16:30
  • 1
    Thought the same, however, about 3 hours later, it's still white ;)
    – 0stone0
    Jul 22, 2021 at 16:30
  • 4
    It looks blue to me currently when I visit the question. Is it possible it was temporary?
    – Catija StaffMod
    Jul 22, 2021 at 16:34
  • 1
    Weird. That's so confusing. It shows blue in incognito on my computer
    – Catija StaffMod
    Jul 22, 2021 at 16:44
  • 3
    I wish I could blame caching. Currently it still shows white on a incognito tab.
    – 0stone0
    Jul 22, 2021 at 16:47
  • 1
    I'm using Chrome 91 so css variables shouldn't be an issue. I've added some additional information to the question. If I missed something, please let mw know @AaronShekey.
    – 0stone0
    Jul 22, 2021 at 17:12
  • 2
    @AaronShekey I see the same white post notice on this arqade meta post a MSE mod just migrated. On MSE though, it's blue for me too ... Same browser as 0stone0, Chrome 91, but on Windows 10.
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Jul 22, 2021 at 17:17
  • 4
    This one sure has us stumped.
    – Aaron Shekey
    Jul 22, 2021 at 17:24
  • 1
    @AaronShekey I've randomly checked a bunch of sites now, and I'm only seeing the blue boxes on sites where I have a diamond (MSE and IPS). All the others seem white. Opening those two in incognito mode/being logged out shows me white boxes on those IPS too (MSE remains blue, weirdly). Logging in while in incognito mode on IPS, and they're back to blue on IPS...
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Jul 22, 2021 at 17:33
  • 1
    @AaronShekey on SO: i.stack.imgur.com/mh2DV.png and I'm on Chrome, Win 10, with all userscripts disabled: source: stackoverflow.com/a/44127313 or on a review: i.stack.imgur.com/ijW9Y.png source: stackoverflow.com/review/first-posts/29446441
    – rene
    Jul 22, 2021 at 17:51
  • 3
    @AaronShekey FWIW I have an var(--theme-secondary-050) on a background-color in the .s-notice__info, .s-banner__info CSS rule in primary.css where Chrome claims that the var doesn't exist. Other vars like var(--fc-medium); do exist, according to Chrome.
    – rene
    Jul 22, 2021 at 18:00
  • 3
    Also reported on MSO: Transparent notification popups and closed questions headers.
    – Sebastian Simon
    Jul 22, 2021 at 18:09
  • 6
    The reason it works for moderators on sites they have diamond is caused by the fact that the moderator.css does have those missing vars. I guess all devs get that moderators.css served as well. On Stack Apps stuff works for me.
    – rene
    Jul 22, 2021 at 18:13
  • 3
    I see blue and I'm not a mod. I would like to add that the color has changed on dark mode on SO. Was that intentional? I hope not because the contrast is bad.
    – 41686d6564
    Jul 22, 2021 at 19:01
  • 1
    The contrast is a separate issue that'll get fixed in a follow-up Stacks release.
    – Aaron Shekey
    Jul 22, 2021 at 19:46

5 Answers 5

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13

Update This has now been fixed in all geographies. Our CDN was definitely not serving the latest version of our base CSS file to some geographic areas. We have an idea of why that is, but we're going to dedicate some time on Monday to nail down why exactly this happened and how to prevent it from happening again. Thanks all for your patience and dedication to troubleshooting!

edit: Thanks to the sleuthing of our users, I am able to reproduce the error by using a VPN to set my browser location to somewhere in Europe (in my specific case, Amsterdam). The issue is definitely due to an old version of the styles being served. I'm escalating this internally to see if we can get this figured out.

Original response:

None of us internally were able to reproduce this issue, whether we were logged in, incognito, moderators or otherwise. We're currently banking on this being a caching issue, with the old version of some CSS files sticking around and causing issues with new files. We've purged the cache across the network for the suspected culprit while we dig deeper into the issue.

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  • 5
    This appears to be geography related. This link: cdn.sstatic.net/Shared/stacks.css?v=8efb1861e515 still returns different content for different regions. The bad version is much shorter and is x-served-by: cache-fra19172-FRA. The good version is longer and is x-served-by: cache-lon4268-LON.
    – GSerg
    Jul 22, 2021 at 20:48
  • 3
    Still happening for me. And the flagging popup notice has a transparent background too.
    – curiousdannii
    Jul 23, 2021 at 5:25
  • @curiousdannii see my answer below.
    – Luuklag
    Jul 23, 2021 at 7:45
  • 1
    Could it be the issues Akamai had are related to this?
    – rene
    Jul 23, 2021 at 8:09
  • 3
    @GSerg Oh, that's good sleuthing! The cdn caching should have been purged everywhere, but I'll contact the team in charge and see what we can do there. At this point, it might be easier to just release a new version of Stacks to get a new cachebreaker hash entirely ;)
    – Ben Kelly StaffMod
    Jul 23, 2021 at 14:04
10

Here is another affected banner, in the review queues:

enter image description here

And I can confirm it's a local issue. The screenshot above was taken from the Netherlands; if I VPN to the United States, the banner looks normal.

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8
  • 1
    Hmm, I had to do a hard refresh a few times on one page to get the correct banner colour. Worked on the third try. Maybe there are multiple caches and you get one of them. There might still be a faulty one, for some reason.
    – VLAZ
    Jul 23, 2021 at 10:08
  • OK, definitely reproducible for me - I hit Ctrl + F5 and I get the background either missing or not fairly regularly.
    – VLAZ
    Jul 23, 2021 at 10:16
  • Some more info: screenshot - there are three CSS files gotten on each page load. I reloaded the page until I the background was missing colour and presisted the logs. Last batch is broken. The stacks.css has different size to the others.
    – VLAZ
    Jul 23, 2021 at 10:22
  • Wonder if this somehow has to do with the outage at that major CDN provider (akamai) yesterday
    – Luuklag
    Jul 23, 2021 at 10:32
  • Using my chrome broswer on Win 10 I consistently get the regular blue banners, on mac I get the blue banners using a VPN, and white banners from NL.
    – Luuklag
    Jul 23, 2021 at 10:36
  • @Luuklag AFAIK Stack Exchange exclusively uses CloudFlare.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Jul 23, 2021 at 10:36
  • I've also noticed that the background colour on the links on the profile page are also missing on the affected browser/machine, so the link is effectively "invisible". I can resolve the issue by using a new incognito session, but clearing the local browser cache does not (very weird) - without having to resort to a VPN to change locale. (?)
    – MrWhite
    Jul 23, 2021 at 11:12
  • 2
    Tried to be more scientific and hard refreshed 100 times. The results were: 49 of those got the bad CSS with the missing background, 51 got the correct one with the background.
    – VLAZ
    Jul 23, 2021 at 12:50
5

I see people still posting that this happens to them, and for a while I thought it did to me as well.

Screenshot to illustrate below text

On the left you see my Firefox browser, that has been running for a couple of days already, which indeed shows the white box. On the right you see my freshly rebooted Chrome browser, which behaves correctly. So I indeed concur with Ben Kelly on a caching issue here.

I'm sorry, but I actually can't concur with Ben here. As Glorfindel pointed out in his answer, this is a locale issue. I unknowingly had a VPN turned on on my Chrome browser, set to go to Atlanta, US. (I hardly use that browser, so didn't recall having that on.) When I turn that VPN off, and have it use my local address, it shows me white banners.

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4
  • Shift + Refresh / Ctrl + F5 should fix this in the affected browsers. Had the same problem and after doing a hard refresh I can now see background to the notification. before and after
    – VLAZ
    Jul 23, 2021 at 9:19
  • 1
    Seems it's inconsistent. It's not just browser cache. Hard refreshing multiple times will sometimes show the post with background, sometimes would not.
    – VLAZ
    Jul 23, 2021 at 10:24
  • There would seem to be some kind of "local" caching at play here, HOWEVER, no amount of clearing the local browser cache (Ctrl+F5, "Disable cache" in dev tools, restart/update browser) resolves this for me. BUT a new incognito session on the same browser DOES resolve the issue and using another browser (that I've not used for a while) on the same machine DOES resolve the issue. @VLAZ
    – MrWhite
    Jul 23, 2021 at 10:27
  • @MrWhite very weird. I can reliably get either the missing background or the real one with repeat hard refreshes. See my comments to Glorfindel for more of my findings.
    – VLAZ
    Jul 23, 2021 at 10:30
3

I assume this is related... the background colour on the links on the profile page are also missing, so the link is "invisible":

Profile page with background colour missing

I see this on "most" stack exchange sites (both main site and meta), eg. Webmasters, WebApps, WordPress, Superuser, etc.

But I don't see this on StackOverflow, ServerFault or this Meta site.

It does look like a bizarre "local" caching-type issue, HOWEVER, no amount of clearing the local browser cache (Ctrl+F5, "Disable cache" in dev tools, restart/update browser) resolves this for me on Chrome (Version 92.0.4515.107). BUT a new incognito session on the same browser DOES resolve the issue*1 and using another browser (that I've not used recently) on the same machine DOES resolve the issue. Using another device on the same LAN (again, not used recently) DOES resolve the issue. VPN is disabled in all cases. From the UK.

*1 UPDATE: Behaviour is inconsistent... although I stated above that a "new incognito session" (in Chrome) resolved the issue, after closing that session and opening another new incognito session then the problem returned! Some kind of CDN issue perhaps?

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-1

I think I'm getting the same with Dark Theme. Using Firefox 90 on Windows 10. I seem to notice the current color scheme degraded contrast and readability of text inside the box.

enter image description here

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1
  • 5
    This issue is not related, but was introduced with the same release. We already have a PR in progress here if you're interested in following along
    – Ben Kelly StaffMod
    Jul 23, 2021 at 14:11

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