Intermittently I'm getting black ACARS windows. Just the title bar displays and putting the mouse cursor over it shows an hour glass so it appears it's just waiting for data.

Router firewall shows an open http session with the Flight Adventures server.

Any clues?

Andrew Luck
18 SW EGSH

• Problems with ACARS windows,Ben Chiu, 22:37z, 02-24-02
  • RE: Problems with ACARS windows,andrewluck, 19:33z, 02-25-02
    • RE: Problems with ACARS windows,Ben Chiu, 21:08z, 02-25-02
  • RE: Problems with ACARS windows,RobertVA, 20:52z, 02-25-02
    • RE: Taskbar buttons,Ben Chiu, 21:17z, 02-25-02
      • RE: Taskbar buttons,RobertVA, 22:33z, 02-25-02
        • RE: Taskbar buttons,Ben Chiu, 22:47z, 02-25-02

> Intermittently I'm getting black ACARS windows. Just the title bar
> displays and putting the mouse cursor over it shows an hour glass so it
> appears it's just waiting for data.
>
> Router firewall shows an open http session with the Flight Adventures
> server.
>
> Any clues?

Are you using Netscape? If so, it's probably some code that Robert had us add to try and make ACARS play the alert sound. What was happening is the sound call causes NS to download some plug in. I'll remove the code later on this evening when things settle down. Let me know if it helps/eliminates the problem.

If you're not using NS, is ACARS locking up on you? Are you running/surfing in the background? Are you on a dialup? I've noticed that ACARS takes a long time to update if I'm downloading or surfing large pages in the background (I'm on a dialup), but it's never locked up on me. It just takes a while to update under some conditions.

Thanks for the report.

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No Netscape. Just IE5.5.

If I leave it for long enough (can be several minutes) then it'll eventually popup. Until then the window is just black.

This is on ISDN with no other traffic on the link.

Tonight, I made a cup of coffee while waiting for it and it popped up with your message to me. I haven't cleared that and it's now bleeping every minute, but the window is black again. After about 3 minutes writing this I've got the text back again.

Andrew Luck
18 SW EGSH

> If I leave it for long enough (can be several minutes) then it'll
> eventually popup. Until then the window is just black.
>
> This is on ISDN with no other traffic on the link.
>
> Tonight, I made a cup of coffee while waiting for it and it popped up
> with your message to me. I haven't cleared that and it's now bleeping
> every minute, but the window is black again. After about 3 minutes
> writing this I've got the text back again.

Greetings Andrew:

Well, first thing is, clear my message from ACARS. ACARS will continue to beep at you every time it refreshes if you have a message waiting until you clear it.

Please have a look at your cache settings in IE. Tools: Internet Options: Temporary Internet Files: Settings:
Do you have this set for automatic? If not, please set it to automatic. Shut down IE and try it again.

Please let us know if there's any change.

Another thing: Please try tracert to www.flightadventures.com

If your cache is OK, I'm guessing there's some timeout problems along the route from your location to the server.

Ben

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Netscape would have asked for permission before attempting to download the plugin for playing sounds.

I thought the code that attempted to play the sound in Netscape had already been removed. I guess it is by now in light of this. The last time I looked at the ACARS code, the problem appeared to be connected with our attempt to customize the client side Java-script at the local level for which browser was in use. Ben has added several features since then.

This sounds like some data got lost or delayed somewhere between the server hard drive and the client computer system. There are so many variables it would be difficult to determine where amoung the several relay points along the way caused the delay. When the page finally displayed it may not have even been the same refresh cycle. I don't recall if the refresh timer is above the part of the page that displays the content.

Robert

Wishing these taskbar buttons didn't have duplicate labels

>Robert
>
>Wishing these taskbar buttons didn't have duplicate labels

Greetings Robert:

Which taskbar buttons would that be?

I have three open and each are different:

1. FlightAdventures Virtual Pilot Center (main VPC page)
2. Welcome Ben Chiu (ACARS)
3. Compose your message (this window)

Ben

I don't know off the top of my head what others use "FlightAdventures..." as part of explorer window title, but when on message board topic lists I get a VERY similar "- FlightAdventures..." label which is difficult to distinguish from the menu page's taskbar button. Do you think "Topic List: FlightAdventures...", "Message Board: FlightAdventures..." or "Forums: FlightAdventures..." might be more usefull to site visitors when the Windows task bar truncates the button labels?

I bought a book last night that describes some popular HTML tags as "depreciated", a term apparently used for tags that are proposed for elimination in future versions of the HTML standards (following version 4). Most of what these tags accomplish appear to be achiveable with cascadeing style sheets. I beleive I have seen some of these tags in FlightAdventures pages. This might be anouther item on the to long "to do" list so the site isn't broken when new browsers come out.

Robert

Wishing the buttons on my taskbar didn't have so many duplicate labels.

> I don't know off the top of my head what others use
> "FlightAdventures..." as part of explorer window title, but when on
> message board topic lists I get a VERY similar "- FlightAdventures..."
> label which is difficult to distinguish from the menu page's taskbar
> button.

If you look carefully, the titles only say "- FlightAdventures Message Board" when there's no subject title for the subject. If you're in a message, the message title comes up first. For example, this one will display as "RE: Taskbar buttons - FlightAdventures Message Board."

> Do you think "Topic List: FlightAdventures...", "Message Board:
> FlightAdventures..." or "Forums: FlightAdventures..." might be more
> usefull to site visitors when the Windows task bar truncates the button
> labels?

If we reverse the title to read "- Message Board: FlightAdventures," it would read that way on every page title too (not the title bar). I'll look into it, but that title is a system wide variable that is not independent (e.g. can be changed on a per page basis.)

> I bought a book last night that describes some popular HTML tags as
> "depreciated", a term apparently used for tags that are proposed for
> elimination in future versions of the HTML standards (following version
> 4). Most of what these tags accomplish appear to be achiveable with
> cascadeing style sheets. I beleive I have seen some of these tags in
> FlightAdventures pages. This might be anouther item on the to long "to
> do" list so the site isn't broken when new browsers come out.

I have no idea what you're talking about here. However, I think it's probably best to move this conversation to the Beta conference. We can continue there.

Ben

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