Javascript / browser / OS problem???

[Eric]

I have a user of a web application written in Java/JSP that is unable
to login to the site simply because certain links on the page do not
run when they are clicked. Other popups using Javascript on the same
page work correctly.

It appears to be isolated to 1-2 machines in a particular network. I
cannot verify whether these machines have had virus/spyware scans, but
I do know the user is running Firefox 2.1 and IE 7 with the same
problem in both browsers. I am not involved with their network setup
or PC setup.

A much paired-down version of the page works properly for this user.
But the fully coded page renders incorrectly and does not appear to
run any javascript. The window status bar always displays Done, on
mouse over of the links, whereas it normally would show the javascript
about to be run. I have tried to isolate certain sections of code,
with no success.

An <img...tag in the HTML source is completely missing, and the JSP
code which contains it has no logic surrounding.

JSP
<td><img src="/images/login/photo.gif" width="250"
height="250"></td>
Page Source
<td></td>
I am wondering if this is a code issue, a browser issue, or an OS
issue. Of the many users of our software, this is the only one to
ever encounter such an issue.

[Adambrz]

On Jan 30, 3:51 pm, "Eric" <eric1...@gmail .comwrote:

I have a user of a web application written in Java/JSP that is unable
to login to the site simply because certain links on the page do not
run when they are clicked. Other popups using Javascript on the same
page work correctly.

It appears to be isolated to 1-2 machines in a particular network. I
cannot verify whether these machines have had virus/spyware scans, but
I do know the user is running Firefox 2.1 and IE 7 with the same
problem in both browsers. I am not involved with their network setup
or PC setup.

A much paired-down version of the page works properly for this user.
But the fully coded page renders incorrectly and does not appear to
run any javascript. The window status bar always displays Done, on
mouse over of the links, whereas it normally would show the javascript
about to be run. I have tried to isolate certain sections of code,
with no success.

An <img...tag in the HTML source is completely missing, and the JSP
code which contains it has no logic surrounding.

JSP
<td><img src="/images/login/photo.gif" width="250"
height="250"></td>
Page Source
<td></td>

I am wondering if this is a code issue, a browser issue, or an OS
issue. Of the many users of our software, this is the only one to
ever encounter such an issue.

do you have other users with the same browsers running ok?

[Elegie]

Eric wrote:

Hi Eric,

A much paired-down version of the page works properly for this user.
But the fully coded page renders incorrectly and does not appear to
run any javascript. The window status bar always displays Done, on
mouse over of the links, whereas it normally would show the javascript
about to be run. I have tried to isolate certain sections of code,
with no success.

Instead of using IE's console, ask your user to open the Firefox
javascript console, clear it, load the page and report the errors - you
will get some much more detailed information. Also, carefully compare
the source produced by your faulty user with the expected source.

An <img...tag in the HTML source is completely missing, and the JSP
code which contains it has no logic surrounding.

Then you definitely have a problem, either the page isn't delivered
properly (e.g, server error, proxy error), is modified on the client
prior to being displayed (e.g, popup blocker software, user scripts), or
fails due to some particular client setting (e.g, javascript deactivated).

Your approach to determining what goes wrong is absolutely correct, so
don't get too desperate and keep on, you'll eventually find what's the
problem.
Kind regards,
Elegie.

[Eric]

On Jan 31, 9:00 am, Elegie <ele...@invalid .comwrote:

Eric wrote:

Hi Eric,

A much paired-down version of the page works properly for this user.
But the fully coded page renders incorrectly and does not appear to
run any javascript. The window status bar always displays Done, on
mouse over of the links, whereas it normally would show the javascript
about to be run. I have tried to isolate certain sections of code,
with no success.

Instead of using IE's console, ask your user to open the Firefox
javascript console, clear it, load the page and report the errors - you
will get some much more detailed information. Also, carefully compare
the source produced by your faulty user with the expected source.

An <img...tag in the HTML source is completely missing, and the JSP
code which contains it has no logic surrounding.

Then you definitely have a problem, either the page isn't delivered
properly (e.g, server error, proxy error), is modified on the client
prior to being displayed (e.g, popup blocker software, user scripts), or
fails due to some particular client setting (e.g, javascript deactivated).

Your approach to determining what goes wrong is absolutely correct, so
don't get too desperate and keep on, you'll eventually find what's the
problem.

Kind regards,
Elegie.

Thanks for the reply. I suspect this user has Symantec firewall or
internet security running, as I am seeing some javascript functions
(Sym*) in the source that is not mine, and other things are
reformatted and/or missing.

[Eric]

On Jan 31, 11:25 am, "Eric" <eric1...@gmail .comwrote:

On Jan 31, 9:00 am, Elegie <ele...@invalid .comwrote:

Eric wrote:

Hi Eric,

A much paired-down version of the page works properly for this user.
But the fully coded page renders incorrectly and does not appear to
run any javascript. The window status bar always displays Done, on
mouse over of the links, whereas it normally would show the javascript
about to be run. I have tried to isolate certain sections of code,
with no success.

Instead of using IE's console, ask your user to open the Firefox
javascript console, clear it, load the page and report the errors - you
will get some much more detailed information. Also, carefully compare
the source produced by your faulty user with the expected source.

An <img...tag in the HTML source is completely missing, and the JSP
code which contains it has no logic surrounding.

Then you definitely have a problem, either the page isn't delivered
properly (e.g, server error, proxy error), is modified on the client
prior to being displayed (e.g, popup blocker software, user scripts), or
fails due to some particular client setting (e.g, javascript deactivated).

Your approach to determining what goes wrong is absolutely correct, so
don't get too desperate and keep on, you'll eventually find what's the
problem.

Kind regards,
Elegie.

Thanks for the reply. I suspect this user has Symantec firewall or
internet security running, as I am seeing some javascript functions
(Sym*) in the source that is not mine, and other things are
reformatted and/or missing.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

A desktop support user on the same network/PC setup confirmed the
problem being Symantec Client Security/Firewall. With firewall on,
page doesn't load fully/properly. With firewall off, page works
fine. Now they have to either disable firewall, or enter certain
sites as exceptions so that the software doesn't parse our code
incorrectly.

We are also sending the code and page source to Symantec to have them
explain themselves, should be interesting.

Hopefully this will help somebody in the future.

[Eric]

On Jan 31, 11:25 am, "Eric" <eric1...@gmail .comwrote:

On Jan 31, 9:00 am, Elegie <ele...@invalid .comwrote:

Eric wrote:

Hi Eric,

A much paired-down version of the page works properly for this user.
But the fully coded page renders incorrectly and does not appear to
run any javascript. The window status bar always displays Done, on
mouse over of the links, whereas it normally would show the javascript
about to be run. I have tried to isolate certain sections of code,
with no success.

Instead of using IE's console, ask your user to open the Firefox
javascript console, clear it, load the page and report the errors - you
will get some much more detailed information. Also, carefully compare
the source produced by your faulty user with the expected source.

An <img...tag in the HTML source is completely missing, and the JSP
code which contains it has no logic surrounding.

Then you definitely have a problem, either the page isn't delivered
properly (e.g, server error, proxy error), is modified on the client
prior to being displayed (e.g, popup blocker software, user scripts), or
fails due to some particular client setting (e.g, javascript deactivated).

Your approach to determining what goes wrong is absolutely correct, so
don't get too desperate and keep on, you'll eventually find what's the
problem.

Kind regards,
Elegie.

Thanks for the reply. I suspect this user has Symantec firewall or
internet security running, as I am seeing some javascript functions
(Sym*) in the source that is not mine, and other things are
reformatted and/or missing.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

A desktop support user on the same PC setup confirmed the
problem being Symantec Client Security/Firewall. With firewall on,
page doesn't load fully/properly. With firewall off, page works fine.
Now they have to either disable firewall, or enter certain sites as
exceptions so that the software doesn't parse our code incorrectly.

We are also sending my code and the page source to Symantec to find
out
why they are doing this. That should be interesting.

[Elegie]

Eric wrote:

Hello,

A desktop support user on the same network/PC setup confirmed the
problem being Symantec Client Security/Firewall. With firewall on,
page doesn't load fully/properly. With firewall off, page works
fine. Now they have to either disable firewall, or enter certain
sites as exceptions so that the software doesn't parse our code
incorrectly.

Glad you found the problem, given its nature this should now be fairly
easy to solve.

We are also sending the code and page source to Symantec to have them
explain themselves, should be interesting.

I don't think you will get any answer though, after all that is just a
basic popup-blocking mechanism :)

There are basically two approaches a popup blocker software can adopt
for its product:

[1] It can inserts some generic script content inside every HTML page,
before the page is rendered by the browser. The inserted script
generally deactivates "window.ope n", among other things.

[2] It can monitors new browser instances and close the window
immediately. This is how built-in popup blockers work in popular user
agents (firefox, opera).

The thing is that popup blockers are well spread in the internet
community. Unless the product is aimed at a known environment (like an
intranet), it is generally advised not to use regular popups, for which
acceptable fallback often cannot be devised, and rather use some
DHTML-based system (with clean degradation).

If you want to learn more about popup-blocking, I recommend your
searching comp.lang.javas cript archives, there were some truly
interesting discussions in the past.
Kind regards,
Elegie.

[Randy Webb]

Elegie said the following on 1/31/2007 4:17 PM:

<snip>

[2] It can monitors new browser instances and close the window
immediately. This is how built-in popup blockers work in popular user
agents (firefox, opera).

I find it very difficult - nearly impossible - to believe that is how
"built-in popup blockers work" whereby it simply closes new windows.
That is *not* how they work. I never get a popup using any one of the
three browsers I use unless I explicitly tell it to give me a new window.

--
Randy
Chance Favors The Prepared Mind
comp.lang.javas cript FAQ - http://jibbering.com/faq/index.html
Javascript Best Practices - http://www.JavascriptToolbox.com/bestpractices/

[Elegie]

Randy Webb wrote:

>[2] It can monitors new browser instances and close the window
immediately. This is how built-in popup blockers work in popular user
agents (firefox, opera).

I find it very difficult - nearly impossible - to believe that is how
"built-in popup blockers work" whereby it simply closes new windows.

Honestly, I absolutely do not know what strategies vendors of browsers
have deployed on their products, I was just using this as an example to
demonstrate the approach (since I usually tend to group into one
category built-in popup blockers with external software that do not
insert content to block the popup).

I realize that I should have been more precise (sorry for the
confusion), but didn't think that was needed as I was simply giving a
"hint".

That is *not* how they work.

Well, do *you* know how it really works? I mean, imagine your core
product with two millions of lines, and the boss that says "add some
popup blocking mechanism"... <kidding>

I never get a popup using any one of the
three browsers I use unless I explicitly tell it to give me a new window.

That's because there's logic inside your browser that kills unwanted
popups, hopefully before any resource is allocated to create them,
determining what popups are unwanted, maybe using the way the popup is
created, maybe inferring a strategy from content in the called URL...
Regards,
Elegie.

[Eric]

On Jan 31, 5:18 pm, Elegie <ele...@invalid .comwrote:

Randy Webb wrote:

[2] It can monitors new browser instances and close the window
immediately. This is how built-in popup blockers work in popular user
agents (firefox, opera).

I find it very difficult - nearly impossible - to believe that is how
"built-in popup blockers work" whereby it simply closes new windows.

Honestly, I absolutely do not know what strategies vendors of browsers
have deployed on their products, I was just using this as an example to
demonstrate the approach (since I usually tend to group into one
category built-in popup blockers with external software that do not
insert content to block the popup).

I realize that I should have been more precise (sorry for the
confusion), but didn't think that was needed as I was simply giving a
"hint".

That is *not* how they work.

Well, do *you* know how it really works? I mean, imagine your core
product with two millions of lines, and the boss that says "add some
popup blocking mechanism"... <kidding>

I never get a popup using any one of the
three browsers I use unless I explicitly tell it to give me a new window.

That's because there's logic inside your browser that kills unwanted
popups, hopefully before any resource is allocated to create them,
determining what popups are unwanted, maybe using the way the popup is
created, maybe inferring a strategy from content in the called URL...

Regards,
Elegie.

The funny thing about all this.. the window.open javascript calls on
the page worked fine with Symantec firewall turned on. Links to
popups worked just fine, so I can't suspect the software is trying to
prevent ads. It was the normal href links and onclick javascripts
that weren't working. And not only was the software inserting
javascript into the page source near the top and bottom, but it was
completely reformatting my HTML. How else could you explain this???
An <imgtag is completely missing!

IE page source
<FORM name=UserLogin action=/ext/LoginEval?link_ id= method=post>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=800 align=center border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD><IMG src="IE%20Login _files/black_knight_lo go3.jpg"></TD></TR>
<TR>
....
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD></TD>
JSP page source
<FORM name='UserLogin ' action='/ext/LoginEval?link_ id=<%=
request.getAttr ibute("R_link_i d")%>' method='POST'>
<table width="800" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0"
cellspacing="0" >
<tr><td><img src="<%= hroot%>/<%= mfrid%>/images/<
%=sessionMgr.ge tMfr().getLogo( )%>"></td></tr>
<tr>
....
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="0" >
<tr>
<td><img src="<%= hroot%>/<%= mfrid%>/images/login/
photo.gif" width="250" height="250"></td>