EZBoard Popup - HELP!!

[Guest Jane]

I have been reading this website for a while and have had no problems navigating. Today I registered and I am starting to get frustrated with it. It automatically signs me in as a registered user (which is fine) but I keep getting a popup for "EZBoard" that I have to close down in order to read the screen - does anyone know how I get rid of this? The dates and times of the messages don't seem to update either - the main screen shows messages with times that I know I have been on since but when I click on them there are newer messages waiting. It's a little frustrating trying to navigate - as I said I didn't have any problems until I became a registered user! Anyone have any ideas?

 

Thanks,

from one of the more technically inept applicants!

[Guest Ian Wong]

Hi Jane,

 

I suspect that what's going on is that you don't have cookies enabled on your web-browser. A cookie is a small piece of information that is left by a website in order to figure out your profile, etc. They are not viruses nor are they malicious. However, a lot of people don't like them mainly because they don't like the idea of a website being able to leave information on your computer.

 

The EZBoard pop-up is designed to pop up once only, and then afterwards recognise, via a cookie, that you've read the information already and therefore never pop up again. However, if your cookies aren't enabled, then each time you visit the forums, EZBoard thinks that this is your first visit, and gives you the pop-up.

 

You may also have your web browser program set to where old versions of each website you've visited are actually saved on your computer, in what is known as a disk cache. This is done to "save tme" in that your computer can preferentially load these old versions of a website instead of requesting and then downloading the newest version of the website from the internet. As a result, when you are logged in, you might be seeing the Premed101 forum as it was saved in your disk cache on your own computer from the LAST time you visited, not this current time.

 

For Internet Explorer 5, which is what I use, go to the menu bar and click on Tools. Then go to Internet Options. To fix the disk cache problem, look at where it says Temporary Internet Files, and click on Settings. Once you are in the Settings menu, click on either Automatically, or Every Visit to the Page. Either should fix the cache problem.

 

For the cookies, again, go to the menu bar and click on Tools. Then Internet Options. Now click on the Security Tab and then Custom Level. If you scroll down the screen now, you'll soon come to a heading entitled Cookies. There are two things you can Enable here, one which says Allow Cookies that are stored on your computer, and Allow per-session cookies (not stored). If you enable both of these, then click Okay to save your new settings, and then restart Internet Explorer to start up the new settings, everything should work.

 

Alternately, you could just log out of your Jane account, and continue on as before, but what's the fun in that? The advantage of registering and using the name Jane is that now EZBoard will actually show a small graphic beside new messages, so you don't need to look at dates to see if any new messages have been posted. Makes it much more readable. Hope this helps!

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3

[Guest Jane]

Hi Ian,

 

Thanks for your help. For some reason the pop up doesn't appear today. Yesterday I went in and out a few times and it kept appearing (?!) Maybe because I have rebooted now it is okay. The reason I wanted to be a registered member is so that I could be notified of the "new" messages without having to go in and look at the old ones - it works!!

 

Thanks again,

 

Jane