Does Ning Crash Your Browser?

I had given up on Ning several months ago when it suddenly started crashing my browser whenever I tried to access messages or friend requests. However, I thought I’d try again after seeing mention of the Building a Better Blog group and several others related to learning and education.

Unfortunately, things don’t seem to have improved at all. In Firefox 2.0, it completely crashes, leaving me with a blank white page under the title bar–no menu bar, no toolbars, nothing. I’ve tried letting it sit for several minutes, but I always end up having to shut the program down through the task manager. In IE6, sometimes I get nothing; sometimes if I wait long enough, I see just a “Loading…” screen that doesn’t actually load anything. I just tested IE7 and got to the Loading screen quickly, but then it just sits there indefinitely and I never see my friend requests. I even tried testing on Opera and Safari for Windows this morning; Safari shows the same page as IE does, and Opera crashes like Firefox.

I tried submitting a bug report through Ning’s site, but of course, that crashed too.

Is anyone else having these issues, or is it just me? If you’ve experienced any of this and have found a way around the problems, please share!

Update: Ning is working for me now in Firefox 3. If you’re on Firefox 2 and having problems, try upgrading to the new version.

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18 thoughts on “Does Ning Crash Your Browser?

  1. ning completely freezes my ie. cant even read posts or anything. I can only end it by right click and closing and choosing end task. Any ideas? I don’t feel like reinstalling everything or doing any big changes.

  2. Good morning,

    I have created a social network on Ning and everything looks great it just that when I try to check it on the Ning site it does not appear neither do the accounts of the members on my network. Can anyone tell me if there is something I am not doing correctly or that I have not activated to get my Ning account out there to the Ning community. Thanks

  3. Thank you for your response… However.. No one has alluded to the possible issue of “booters” or “nukers” on the ning network.. The issue I faced was not only a “mass” loading of images on one page.. but I couldn’t help thinking “what if”.
    If this new “open social” is or has not been fully tested with Ning.. Ning could be leaving doors open for possible corruptions. I say this because I have seen attacks on other users sites and systems. (not sure if this is due to WL debacle) but the time between then and now is to risky for me to allow my system to suffer these types of attacks.
    So now I’m forced to relocate somewhere, yet to be determinant. Myspace, facebook, yes even opera.com/community and others simply do not offer the many options needed to create a very and usable site as Ning once did.
    So if I was to try the new Firefox 3.. and still get these same issues.. then it is deffeantly a ning or a boot/nuke issue.

  4. I have just been emailed by Ning and PaganSpace, both are claiming that “There is nothing wrong with their sites, everything is in working order”.

    Ok.. I scan my system.. check.. I have checked permissions.. check.. I have also added a few other test to check my system.. check and double check.. So if their system checks out and so does mine.. where is this issue coming from?.. Crashes Opera, Safari and Firefox..

    I guess if someone wants you off their servers bad enough.. they will do just about anything to accomplish this task.

  5. For weeks I to have been suffering with this issue. It seem to have picked up soon after widget labs was removed from ning.. I left some networks due to this issue, by chance someone approached me while I was offering support at the “developers” page.

    She asked me to check out her page and explain why it was loading very,, and I mean very slow.. Users are grabbing these so called “greeting card welcome” images and technically spamming other users pages or profile.. All of these images required your systems ram and basically use it up.
    The main issue i had was because I’m a loyal mac user, I started off with Safari and then progressed to Opera. never the less the same issue prevailed. Not only did it close my browsers.. it crashed my system 6 times.

    Everything check out for any viruses and errors on system.. Which lead me to do some research.. on this one network I “was” a member of, for some odd reason placed Two or double “latest activity” block on everyone’s page.. a bit redundant.. but after running a web optimization test.. I knew what was going on.. Network creators either do not know how to do something or they are simply making their network inaccessible to those whom want to use it.

    The test proved that 84% of the load time was devoted to off site image loading.. Meaning that with every image on a persons page, its been redirected to an alternate page or that the image or the code associated with the said image, contains an embedded code which may or may not allow for “malicious” entry into a users profile and can result in theft of that users account.

    After it was all said and done.. I was forced to close down 5 networks I created due to this issue. Now that Ning has open the doors to this new Untested “open social” which allows users to adjust their pages using many different forums of “gadgets” I feel that Ning is getting out of hand.. what ever happened to “keep it simple, keep it real” attitude.

  6. You could try contacting Ning’s customer service, but it sounds like they’ve already done that. Besides, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect them to reprogram it. I don’t know if it would be possible to get a chat application to work without using scripts.

    Your easiest solution would be to turn off the no-script add-on, at least while using Ning. Can you turn it off for the entire ningim.com domain?

  7. I am using Firefox(latest version)
    I am trying to use the new Ning Chat Room feature.
    NoScript add-on is blocking it.
    I don’t think it is blocking the application/flash, just the way they have it set up.
    Each time it loads, it will load every online member.
    Each one has a new address. The address is like this example;
    http://firstname123.123.ningim.com:8080
    When this is allowed, then this comes up;
    http://firstname223.224.ningim.com:8080
    Every time it is allowed, a new address is formed.
    I know it is the addresses of each member being loaded into the chat room.
    I am trying to fix this issue, since I can’t seem to convince Ning to change that function.
    Does anyone know how I would go about allowing these addresses.
    Please email me or post here
    Thanks

  8. Yep there are some definite issues with the code generated from the Ning site-setup server(s). This thing is not only a broswer killer, it’s a windows session killer too. There’s only so many times you can have your entire box lock up before you stop coming back. Too bad… great concept.

  9. I tried to join the Better Blog group and got as far as “loading” when it just stopped doing anything. I’m going to try Stephen’s suggestion of a clean install of Firefox hopefully sometime this week. The site itself just seems to have loads of errors though–check the Error Console in Firefox sometime.

    Keep me updated if you figure out anything that fixes the problems!

  10. Hello Christie
    I am also experiencing continuing and frustrating issues with Ning on two Mac (eMac and G4 laptop) computers at home. I can look, and lurk, but not post, and even this is intermittent, i.e., works very occasionally, and at other times, like right now, I can’t even log on. When attempting to upload a comment, I receive the ‘loading’ indicator and nothing happens. Very frustrating with no assistance from Ning right now except a cryptic note which referred to not having tested the platform on eMacs and something about ‘truncated URLs’.

  11. I didn’t do a full reinstall of Firefox because I haven’t taken the time to backup all my add-ons (including my bibliography info saved in Zotero). I tried in safe mode though, with a clean install of Flash.

    It seems unlikely that my Firefox install would be the real source of the problem when I have the issues on multiple computers with multiple browsers and two different virus programs. It’s possible that the firewall on my router somehow interferes; I haven’t gone to the public library to try on their computers.

    I can see the group just fine, Michele, so it isn’t anything there with the chat application. The problem is in accessing my friend requests and messages. Basically, I can lurk but not really actively participate or do any networking.

  12. It is almost certainly your Flash player, which is launched by the chatroom application.

    Try reinstalling Flash, and making sure you have the most recent version of Flash.

    If that doesn’t work, uninstall Flash and Firefox. Make sure you remove the Firefox directory and any setting you can file (you’re trying to make Firefox reinstall its setting when you install it again – otherwise it will just pick up old settings from the previous install). Search for any files or directories called Firefox (if you want to save your bookmarks, export them to a separate file).

    Then reinstall Firefox first, then Flash. If Firefox asks you whether you want to use old settings, say ‘no’.

  13. My Ning won’t Sing! And I thought it was just me… I have been wanting to set up a Ning site for a professional development community, but no luck. The browser locks. The settings are not applied. I have an empty site which I cannot seem to interact with at all. Christy, since you’re famous and powerful, can you ask that nice Mr Andreesen to fix it please?

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