Newbie needs help - three questions

[Simon Kemp]

Hello all,

Struggling to get started with Web Server. Hope someone can help.

1. I have a browse that is working nicely. I would like to put one or more checkboxes on the page that will influence the browse filter. How do I do this?

2. Should I expect range limiting to work in conjunction with column sorting? It doesn't seem to.

3. Why would IE show my pages differently on different machines?  Some show the "round" style, some don't. One machine grumbles about errors on the page, for example "object expected".

Thanks for your patience.

Simon

[Alan Telford]

Simon,

1. The examples of how to do this use a NetWebForm which has controls (could be checkboxes, or droplists, or entry fields), and an included browse. The example app "DropFilter (33)" demonstrates this.
i.e. the filter controls do NOT go on the browse, but on the netwebform.

2. range limiting doesn't work like the abc browse templates. but you can use any filter. e.g. loc:filter = 'cus:number >= 10 and cus:number <= 20'.
It's all in how you construct the filter.

3. no real ideas. perhaps javascript is turned off on some machines, and on for others. I know some of the styles require javascript.

Cheers,
Alan

[Simon Kemp]

Alan,

Thanks a lot for this. I had looked at the example but now it's starting to make more sense.

Still puzzled by the difference in visuals though, and have one machine where "errors on page" mean my site won't even work. If someone could shed some light on this it would be much appreciated.

All the best,

Simon

[Mike Grigsby]

Simon, It's what we deal with when you let MS do whatever they want with the IE platform. It's never conformed properly to world standards. What most people do is detect which browser someone is using and redirect based on that info. I've got some of this on one of my home pages at http://www.myhomeassets.com, but you can also do a google search on "redirect page based on browser".

[Bruce]

Hi Simon,

>> 3. Why would IE show my pages differently on different machines?  Some show the "round" style, some don't. One machine grumbles about errors on the page, for example "object expected".

The browser itself is a somewhat variable animal, and IE particularly can vary quite dramatically from one machine to another. Where possible it is a good idea to try and encourage people to update their browser - if not to IE7 then at least to a "updated" IE6.
IE6 itself spans 5 odd years of browser updates, so you can imagine there are quite a lot of IE6 "versions" out there.

Like any software, IE 6 has bugs, and the later the version the better you are. Considering many of these bugs are exploited for security reasons keeping your browser up to date is even more important than with other software. FireFox is definitely recommended over IE, but I understand that that sort of change isn't always possible.

Plus of course you may have no control over the client at all. So if they can't, or won't upgrade their browser what can you do?

Well firstly, your NetTalk program makes extensive use of 2 browser features that can be disabled. The first is JavaScript and the second are Cookies.
It is possible to work a site with cookies turned off, but to be honest it would be very difficult for you to do, and of course it's very easy for you to make a mistake. Cookies allow the Session number management to be independent of your html code.

Except for the most basic of sites, all the dynamic pages, and most of the fancy features in NetTalk, your server will require JavaScript. (** Note JavaScript does not mean Java - Java is a completely different animal.)

So first thing to check is that cookies are on, and JavaScript is on.

Second thing you can look into is the automatic pre-compression of static files. You can turn off this feature on the WebServer procedure, Advanced tab. Alas turning it off here breaks it for all servers (at the moment) not just IE6 servers. That'll change in the not too distant future.

Cheers
Bruce

[Simon Kemp]

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for this. I'm at the bottom of a steep learning curve and it's all a bit daunting at present!

Simon