I think I have found the problem in the source code. I'm currently rewriting it a little bit to make it cleaner and fix some of the validation issues with the reply-code. The submit button isn't actually a submit button, it's just a normal button which validates the fields upon being clicked and then the JavaScript submits the form, which is causing the problem. A better way to write this sectin of code would be like...
<form action='xt/xt_apollo_reply.php' method='post' name='ApolloForm'>
<input type='hidden' name='message_subject' value='700 page DB book'>
<table width='600' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='4' class='info_table'>
<thead class='info_table_header'>
<tr>
<th colspan='2' align='center'>Post Forum Message</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width='200'><b>Message:</b></td>
<td><textarea cols="69" rows="10" id="msgBody" name="msgBody" wrap='soft' tabindex='2'></textarea></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width='200'><b>Code:</b></td>
<td><textarea cols="69" rows="4" name="sourcecode" wrap='soft' tabindex='2'></textarea><br>If you want to attach source code to this message then paste it above to retain correct formatting.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width='200'> </td>
<td width='400'><input type="submit" value="Post Message" onsubmit='check(form,form.elements.length)' tabindex='3'></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Please note that by posting a Forum Message you are agreeing to <u>all</u> terms in our <a href="?gf=aup">Acceptable Usage Policy</a>.
<input type="hidden" name="b" value="7">
<input type="hidden" name="t" value="33583">
<input type="hidden" name="p" value="0">
<input type='hidden' name="r_msgBody" value="Please enter some text!">
</form>
The above HTML code has been cleaned up in several ways and *might* require a few tweaks to the CSS file, nothing major though. One of the hidden input fields has been taken out of the table because it doesn't belong there (it wasn't even in a cell), all of the attributes have been quoted properly (cellpadding=0 became cellpadding='0'), plus a few other changes.
Then you'd just need to alter the javascript for form validation so that it returns true or false (I've never had the need to stop form submission so I cannot verify that the true/false thing would work) and remove the code to submit the form, which should hopefully stop or allow the form submission by using true/false. This would be a more suitable approach since it no longer requires javascript to submit the form and will allow non-JS browsers to post messages also.
I hope this helps the webmaster fix this annoying problem
If you would like some more of my ideas on what could be done to the site to improve it, feel free to ask me. I know for a fact that the website could be written a little better for search engines. For some examples: the JS-menus on the top and side cannot be crawled by search engines, which hurts DB's listing in the search results pages which means less exposure of DB and less people to test the product on lower-end machines which means that improvements to DB's speed could be slowed down, and the developers could be losing money to products like BlitzBasic or other 3D engines out there, etc. etc. It's a big domino effect. The titles of the webpages are not descriptive and do not help search engines or regular users, plus a few other things which could be done to improve the user experience and increase the exposure of DB.
Like I said, I'm more than willing to contribute
