Funny IWP Behavior

[alterbentzion]

I've set up IWP so that others can read our database over our LAN, but I've encountered two bugs (?) and I need workarounds/fixes/explanations.

~ When viewing a list, only five records appear in the browser window, even though there's room for at least twice that many. (the rest of the vertical space is empty, white.

~ The toolbar does appear in the client's web browser, on the left-hand side, but clicking on the "sort" button triggers a popup window which disappears in a flash.

Now, I know that IWP is optimized for MS Internet Explorer (IE) 6. But I've kinda disabled it on all of our PC's because I've gotten sick of fighting popups and malware. (I've got a Mac at my own desk.) Instead, the PC's use FireFox or Opera, with popups disabled. Am I going to have to compromise network security just so people can use my FMP database?

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

[whitemyer]

IWP limits you to 5 records on screen at a time in list view. I've seen posts that say viewing as a table will show more (20?), but I've not used them because I can't get them to work the way I want them to. I have the status bar locked off for web users and have buttons for Previous 5 and Next 5 on my list pages. The script for Previous basically says if the current record number>1, go to record by calculation current record number minus 5. For Next it says if Get(FoundCount)>Get(RecordNumber)+4, go to record by calculation Get(RecordNumber)+5..

Again, since I disable the status bar, I would use a Sort script. Keep in mind that when sorting (and doing lots of other script steps) the script will NOT be web compatible unless you have "Perform without dialog" checked. So YOU must specify the sort. You may need several buttons (ie: sort by Last Name, sort by Date, etc)

Hope this helps.

[anna f]

My IWP databases act funny in Firefox as well. Like you, I am sick of IE but even simple scripts did not work using Firefox. They are all fine in IE, though. Rather quirky....

[orenco]

Firefox generally works well for me with one noticable exception: The sort function does not work. In fact, it is completely broken in firefox due to poor programming. I am attempting to manipulate the javascript code that comes with FM7, but so far I have had no luck. If anyone else has achieved this, please let me know!

In a discussion with a FM programmer at MacWorld SF, he told me that FM Inc chose specifically to ignore the standards set forth in the W3C consortium to make IWP work explicitly with IE 6 and Safari. (As a side note, I have built a database with mySQL and PHP which works indistiguishably with IE6 and Firefox because it is standard compliant.)

This programmer also told me of a plugin for php which will allow you to talk to a FM database served on Advanced (yes, you need advanced, sorry) similar to writing code for mySQL or MSSQL. Unfortunately, that means hours more programming on your end unless you are already familiar with php and writing web pages from scratch. A great book is Larry Ullmans "PHP and MYSQL for Dynamic Web sites." I know it's a different database software, but the ideas are the same when it comes to communicating with remote databases. In the end, FM should release a v4 update which will fix all these IWP errors.

[alterbentzion]

In the end, FM should release a v4 update which will fix all these IWP errors.

Please clarify - does that mean you think they should or that they expect to? (Hope springs eternal!)

Thanks.

[orenco]

My hope spring eternal as well. I think they SHOULD unless they want angry customers who are forced to work with third party apps (FXforge looks ok, but I have only seen them use it with dreamweaver, so then you are talking about two third party apps).

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

-G.K. Chesterton