Abort didn't work

[terrypin]

Even with some of my more flakey macros I've never had a problem stopping the macro in ME 3, with either:

- R-clicking the System Tray 'Running macro' icon

- Using the Pause+Scroll Lock keys

 

But today neither method worked on a simple macro that opened a web site page. I had to use Terminate Macro Express.

 

Eventually I found that the likely cause was that I had 'Wait for the webpage' enabled, although I'm using Firefox. I always had this set in ME 3 without any problem. It's worrying that these Aborts, particularly the hotkey method, cannot be relied upon 100%. In this case there was no major problem, but if I saw my HD starting to disappear I'd like to be able to hit those keys and minimise the damage!

 

BTW, the reason I had it set in ME 3 was that I had hoped that sooner or later you would get the feature to support Firefox. It's disappointing that ME Pro doesn't do so.

 

--

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Jeff Cleveland]

Terry,

 

I am one of the testers for MEPro. Termination of a macro through clicking on the running man icon has not been consistent for some time. I find that I also must terminate MEPro to abort a macro at times.

 

I am sure the fellows at Kaysville are working the problem.

 

Jeff Cleveland

[Cory]

I too was a beta and found the abort to be unresponsive at certain points. Later versions were pretty good but my observation was that the abort does work even if it doesn't disappear the running man. It seems to me that if a command it taking a long time and you abort the abort is 'in queue' so to speak and will not execute the next command. If you are having problems with a command I suggest looking into the error handling features.

 

Also I think that you might want to write a feature request for MEP to ignore the "Wait for Webpage" if IE is not running.

[terrypin]

Thanks all.

 

Cory: I've duly sent that feature request, although from Jeff's comment I'd hope it's already high on the list of things to fix?

 

BTW, does a list of 'bugs encountered' exist, to avoid duplication?

 

--

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Cory]

Well I would consider the FireFox wait support a different issue. I have every confidence that if the FireFox 'wait for' was easy to implement it would have been done a long time ago. As I understand it FF doesn't do the same kind of messaging so it's a problem. So adding some code that warns a user when creating a macro or simply ignores the setting if FireFox is on top would be easy.

 

During the beta program some of the inner workings were explained to me because I had a specific example where the "Wait for" wasn't working in IE. IHMO even the wiatfor in IE isn't always useful. On a simple HTML page it works fine but if there is any active content it falls flat. You see when IE finishes it sends a system message that it's done. But active web content can cause it to do a little more causing another message of completion. But ME moves on at the first report. EG if you have some Java on your page the initial page can be 'done' in the eyes of IE but let's say the Java runs out and queries a Db someplace and varies it's display. This creates a second 'done' message but it's too late, ME has already advanced. I requested a feature to have the 'wait for' have a 'quiet time' parameter. Think of it as a "Done for X number of seconds". So if you set it for 2 seconds it will monitor for the completion messages and not advance until at least 2 second has past without a 'done' message.

 

If you're interested I actually wrote some macros that monitor the progress indicator in the status bar at the bottom. It was a bit of code but it works really cool and gives the capabilities I describe. Also polling the screen and doing tests is useful.

 

I just don't want you to be disappointed when FF support for the 'wait for' gets here and it doesn't work for you. Generally it works for me but at least 25% of the time it doesn't so you might do better with your own home brew solution.