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The one we've all suffered, now and then.
This is a webpage developed via php with javascript accessing DOM to measure and limit the number of characters in a <textarea>. Really easy - done in no-time, even with the design tweaking.
Works on my machine. So, I pass off a link to the appropriate page to my boss (who needed this) and it doesn't do a thing except initialize. No reaction to text (onkeyup, onblur). He sends it off to another IT user - also doesn't work.
So, this AM I try it on a VM (I normally work from a real computer) - figuring that my box's setup is the problem. Nope. Works on the VM, too.
Now I have to wait for a willing soul to come in and send them the link - and see what happens. If it works on theirs (or not) there's still a problem and I cannot see it to find it, let alone know if I fixed it. No warnings in the debugger.
Something of a deja vu. Maybe even a deja vu deja vu (having a feeling of deja vu that you feel you've had, before).
Eventually, I'll beat it, but I anticipate much frustration in the path.
[update]
So - I sent my boss a detailed step-by-step for using the FireFox debugger.
He did note that his VM version worked, his local machine didn't
As he stepped through from the break point I had him set (local machine), everything worked.
He closed his browser, restarted it, and now it all works.
Something, somewhere, was reset - and perhaps we'll never know.
Makes me think of something akin to unstuffing a stuffed latrine with a plunger
[/update]
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
modified 8-Aug-17 11:47am.
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All my pages have a built-in DO-NOT-CACHE routine in the header. Refresh does the trick.
Also, doesn't explain "new user" failure when boss sent to another IT person.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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They're probably using Edge. Or worse, an archaic version of IE. 
Or, as happened to me once (granted though, this was a complex project using Chromium and therefore irrelevant to your problem) Google updated their browser and it broke the current Chromium build. 
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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FireFox shop around here - and I know they were using it because of the screen-shots they sent.
These DOM and javascript functionalities have been around a long time. Getting values, length, updating value, innerHTML. It's cleanly not working at all - as though there were an error in the javaScript.
The two failures, so far, are 90 minutes away - hence, I need a local failure of some sort so I can debug it the old-fashioned way: with moving alert()'s and commenting-out, to see where it fails.
A royal pain awaits me - and I may need to do this by phone.
Anyway - my test user just arrived !
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I'm not sure that vodka is the answer to your problem, but I think it's worth a shot... 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
Me, all the time
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It's a good solution!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: It's a good solution!
The proper description is 'tincture of water'.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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if you can't isolate the issue with some test cases, then I would have them debug the page on their machine perhaps. Firefox has debug add-ons that could help to.
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Well - coincidentally, the test user came in, clicked my link to the page (as did the others), and, naturally, it worked.
So - now the debugging on their end comes into play - which they don't know how to do (I'm the only one who learned web dev around here). That means doing it by phone, in parallel. Either with the debugger, the hard way, with alerts. A RDT session may be possible.
One small hope: it works today because . . . elephant.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I'm betting they're using IE on a "newer" OS and they haven't enabled active scripting.
Have you seen how IE is locked down on Server 2012 R2, Server 2016 for example?
We have VMs that get assigned to us that are so locked down that the first and only reason you use IE is to download Chrome. I'm serious.
When "active scripting" (javascript) is turned off almost every page is rendered as blank and when you look at the source you see nothing but the outer HTML and BODY tags.
It's crazy that active scripting is turned off by default since HTML5 is (html, css _and_ javascript).
Good luck.
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Well - I could see by the screen shot that they were using FireFox.
by (1) the browser's icons, and (2) how my screen objects were rendered
The O/S is Win7 on the VM - there is no other.
The web-server is WAMP (via Vertrigo).
Horrors w/IE - yeah - but they know better than to use that.
The javascript and DOM used by this is very basic old-stuff.
raddevus wrote: first and only reason you use IE is to download Chrome FireFox.
FIFY . However users, in our company, have FireFox as part of their standard image.
My current 'bet', however, is that something's wrong with their setup. Except it shouldn't be. Almost the exact same procedure is used for integer-only versions of a input/text control. Working for years.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Interesting. Firefox is better than IE, of course. FireFox is often just a bit less forgiving when rendering however. It follows standards more closely and I had written an article here* that worked in every browser but failed in FireFox due to a slight change in how I was handling how certain keys were pressed.
I forget the exact details but it was annoying.
Command Console in your browser via HTML5 Canvas & JavaScript[^]
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Or you could send them a page with a bunch of logging. Where the logging stops is an indicator of where the problem is happening. This could be an alternative solution if debugging/remote debugging is going to be troublesome.
Are you logging exceptions?
Just a thought...
Good luck.
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It's really a short piece of javaScript that I need to debug. Assuming they even get to it.
function charCount(idRef, charMax) {
if(charMax > 0) {
var textBox = document.getElementById('input'+idRef);
var text = textBox.value;
if(text.length > charMax)
textBox.value=text.substring(0, charMax);
document.getElementById('count'+idRef).innerHTML = " "+textBox.value.length+' of '+charMax;
if(textBox.value.length < charMax)
document.getElementById('count'+idRef).style.color = '#080';
else
document.getElementById('count'+idRef).style.color = '#c00';
}
}
So it won't be long - just annoying
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Well
- it worked for a standard user and two version of me.
- it didn't work for two others (admittedly in IT)
So - maybe the first thing I'll do is send them your link!
Thanks.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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It's time you start using a real browser... nothing like lynx[^].
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If I change browsers then its back to SeaMonkey[^]
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: measure and limit the number of characters in a <textarea>
You do know that maxlength works on <textarea>s in all modern browsers, right? 
Can I use... maxlength attribute for input and textarea elements[^]
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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It was more than limiting the number; I had to report back to the user the char count - so I was going into the DOM, anyway.
It becomes part of a set of functionality: like a VIN checker, or even one for credit card input. Exceptions, in those cases are handled at onblur.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Actually, I prefer "It works on my machine, not on yours" to "It suddely fails everywhere without any clue of explanation". For any bug/problem, if you can consistently make it work or fail by changing the environment (from your machine to mine), you have made your first significant step in the debugging.
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My experience and nature is I prefer the all-or-nothing version of failure. In that way, I can at least see the problem and know when it's fixed.
The first significant step in debugging is to be able to reproduce the error. Until then, you've a moving target and may only think you've fixed it.
In this case,however, it would seem to have been the two failed users (of this yet unreleased change) both were in IT - so there machines, even their VM's, were different. When it worked for me AND for a regular user, I knew it wasn't my configuration that allowed it to work - so that moved the problem to them.
As finally noted above, it fixed itself - so their browsers were somehow in a unique state and I doubt I'll ever find out what or why (see paragraph 2, above).
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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"Anomie," Durkhein called it; "Morbio Inferiore," Hermann Hesse called it; "Alienation," Heidigger, Marx, Satre, called it: who among us has not wondered (sometimes with a dreadful sense of dissolution of our very being) what our death will leave behind that is not just a fringe of superfluous decoration on emptiness ?
But, good news: our dying sooner, rather than later [^] can help great corporations, even governments, save money !Quote: Steady improvements in American life expectancy have stalled, and more Americans are dying at younger ages. But for companies straining under the burden of their pension obligations, the distressing trend could have a grim upside: If people don’t end up living as long as they were projected to just a few years ago, their employers ultimately won’t have to pay them as much in pension and other lifelong retirement benefits.
Who could not love the idea that an earlier death could help the great Lockheed Company bring a new airplane into existence ?Quote: “Revised assumptions indicating a shortened longevity,” for instance, led Lockheed Martin to adjust its estimated retirement obligations downward by a total of about $1.6 billion for 2015 and 2016, it said in its most recent annual report.
We must poo-poo the idea that falling life expectancy in developed nations is somehow indicative of quality of life:Quote: Absent a war or an epidemic, it's unusual and alarming for life expectancies in developed countries to stop improving, let alone to worsen. “Mortality is sort of the tip of the iceberg,” says Laudan Aron, a demographer and senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “It really is a reflection of a lot of underlying conditions of life.” The falling trajectory of American life expectancies, especially when compared to those in some other wealthy countries, should be “as urgent a national issue as any other that’s on our national agenda,” she says.
Instead, we should celebrate these statistics as evidence for heroic self-sacrifice: surely, each one of the one in seven Americans with an opiod prescription is helping here [^] !
«Differences between Big-Endians, who broke eggs at the larger end, and Little-Endians gave rise to six rebellions: one Emperor lost his life, another his crown. The Lilliputian religion says an egg should be broken on the convenient end, which is now interpreted by the Lilliputians as the smaller end. Big-Endians gained favor in Blefuscu.» J. Swift, 'Gulliver's Travels,' 1726CE
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Fake news.
No one pays pensions anymore.
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Benjamin Disraeli
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