I have a weird problem that I was wondering anyone had seen before, or (even better) had an answer to.
We have a library management system that is deployed, live and working well - released on an Ionos Linux cloud server and used daily in-house as well as by clients so we can see what obvious issues are on-going etc.
A few new clients (primary schools mainly, in this case) are seeing a problem after having logged in - namely, most of the application workspace is not drawing. We have tried to mimic our original desktop application as much as possible, so this initial stage draws a toolbar (in-house / bespoke) and a side-bar with a repeat of some options, some new (each constructed from a dynamically embedded container control, as permissions vary between users), then the rest shows up as draggable windows (i.e. WebDialogs) once selected. Various themes can be used, but for a minds-eye image, think the ‘settings’ page in Windows.
From what I can find out the main issues are missing bulk of the toolbar background etc. is missing (the two end icons being drawn - I suspect that these are the only two permitted, so I don’t think that there are any icons actually missing), and all the side bar so the bulk of the workspace is just totally white.
The fact that both of the occasions we have seen this on so far are older windows installations (7 or 8, running IE - Yes, I know, don’t start - these are primary schools so its a classic money / lethargy / outsourcing etc. situation where IT support needs to be paid for), led me to suspect that this was bad implementation / respecting of CSS on older OS / Browser installations.
This morning however, we finally booted up an old Dell Inspiron Duo netbook running Windows 7 and IE11 (we don’t recommend using this age of kit, so it has never been tested before) and the application connects and runs like a charm, so I am now thinking on Firewall etc. but it is an odd one as I can’t figure out what would allow some page components and prevent others from being drawn.
I have seen issues in the web framework where canvas drawings were not pushed down properly. Was very maddening. I ended up going to WebImageViews in most cases as I was displaying some icons and the WebImageViews worked much better than trying to draw the icons in WebCanvases.
I ended up for another part of the app using Daniel Taylor’s WebCustomControls. The jQueryCanvas he has in those classes seem to be much more reliable. Unfortunately, Daniel has not updated his classes in years. He’s got a new version in development and every time I ask him, he says it will be soon but I’ve seen nothing.
I think Web2.0 will render a lot of these issues moot, however.
But I would try having the run a different browser than IE. See if Chrome works better for them. I know it may not be “policy” or whatever, but it’s worth it at least for a test/sanity check.
I have seen schools where they are still using XP. I even saw one once where they were using antiquated 56K modems.
WebCanvas is indeed MUCH slower than WebImageView. And pictures URL work MUCH faster than pictures dragged into the project. The fastest way is WebImageView, and pictures served from a webspace.
Thanks guys. I’ll take a look at these, but I suspect that some of the components that are not drawing are actually composites of standard controls (such as specific placement of labels). While we obviously use image drawing for the toolbar icons and the like, icon captions and under-icon groupings are just labels.
I’ve attached a screenshot (compressed, and crushed together from a full screem - it’s not normally this dense) of what it is meant to look like in a theme called ‘Looks-Like-Ten’. The camera-shot that they’ve sent in (without any displayed windows) has a completely white background (so no side-bar), no black background to the toolbar and only the left- and right-most icons. The side-bar is mainly labels positioned in place (without web containers), so it’s baffling me a little as to what is throwing this.
I would recommend trying turning off any autocomplete features in the browser they are using. We have seen a lot of instances of slow down to our web apps when autocomplete of any kind is on in the browser.
