Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone encounters this issue before - where intermittently participants were complaining about the screen frozen on the html page that instructs them to press "space" to continue. I haven't establish which OS but some claimed they tried multiple times, but the screen always froze (sometimes at different html page) and they have to restart the machine.

I checked the forum, there is a post at https://www.millisecond.com/forums/Topic18701.aspx about the screen could be losing focus, and suggested to try ALT-TAB Windows key - at this point, no participant has tried or report success with this method.

Given that most of these "freezing" issues happen in html page element - the common symptom is press <space> but nothing happen, does anyone come across similar issue? This could be my script too....the element and the configuration are very straightforward, for e.g.

<htmlpage intro>
/ file = "experiment_overview.html"
</htmlpage>

<htmlpage consent>
/ file = "consent_form.html"
</htmlpage>

then

<block intro>
/ preinstructions = (intro)
/ skip = [parameters.is_mturk == false]
</block>

<block consent>
/ preinstructions = (consent)
/ skip = [parameters.is_mturk == false]
</block>

then

<expt>
/onexptend = [values.completed = 1]
/blocks = [1 = intro; 2 = consent; 3 = practice_block; 4 = block1; 5 = demographics; 6 = completion_block; 7 = completion]
</expt>

(a) Is this a web experiment? If so, please post the link to its start page.
(b) Is there an <instruct> element in the script? If so, please post it.

Hey Dave,

Is it possible that I share the link with you in private because I am not comfortable sharing it publicly at the moment due to in-progress study, alternatively I can prepare a similar but trim down version of the exp. Apologies for the inconvenience.

By the way, I also notice that occasionally we are getting the following timeout error on the server and client:
(This is basically one of the stimuli - an image - but when I click on the link, I can view the image with no issue)

Inquisit encountered errors with this test.
The errors have been logged so the researcher can note and fix them.
Type
Script Context
Error Message
iconError/vlabgdpa/gist_batch_v1_1_3_mt/batch_v1_imgset_1_3_mt.iqxSystem error 12002: The operation timed out Line 295, File win\WinUtil.cpp
iconError/vlabgdpa/gist_batch_v1_1_3_mt/batch_v1_imgset_1_3_mt.iqxUnable to open file '<file link>'.
iconError/vlabgdpa/gist_batch_v1_1_3_mt/gist.iqx.picture.gdg_267soa.itemsUnable to load the picture '<file link>'.

Please feel free to share the link via private message here.

As for the timeout error, these usually originate client-side (reasons might be firewalls, network congestion, etc.). The fact that you're able to see the image in your browser is not necessarily instructive -- the browser will use a different internet / networking library than Inquisit does or might be pulling the image from its cache.

After some debugging, I can reproduce this problem. I think my scenario is the HTML page is long, so it will have a scrollbar. And on Windows machine, as I understand from you (Dave), that it is using IE behind the scene, the spacebar is actually scrolling the page down instead of proceeding to the next page. So I might need to either not using spacebar to continue, or disable spacebar in the html page. Funny enough, if I wait long enough, and press spacebar, then it kind of works - which is strange itself.