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Web Site Command Hanging


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Hi everybody,

 

This issue may be related to the ever-popular Running Man Hanging posts, or it may be completely separate.

 

I have several macros that call web sites using the Web Site command. I leave my settings to use Internet Explorer, and I have Wait for the webpage checked.

 

Until very recently, I had never experienced any problem with this command or its usage. However in the past day or two I have started experiencing a relatively annoying, macro-crippling problem. ME is not recognizing the webpage as it finishes loading, leaving my macro hanging and waiting.

 

The work-around is straight-forward enough: uncheck wait for webpage, and then build a Repeat loop checking to see if the web site I'm looking for is there. But straight-forward or not, it's obnoxious and undesirable.

 

Has anybody else experiencing the hanging running man issue been able to link it directly to this particular command? Or should I expect to have it happen on other commands as well?

 

And just to be clear: This is happening on a macro that worked fine earlier today. I made one small change to an Update Textbox command that falls immediately prior to the Web Site command, and since then it has not worked (I changed the font size of one word and turned the last line into two lines that are centered, assuming that matters). Undoing the changes - or, more precisely, making new changes that put the Update back the way it was - did not repair the issue.

 

 

-EDIT - 12:16 PM Mtn

 

The macro I am having the problem with right now systematically launches a number of intranet sites that I use at work. The first one is having the problem described above. The next one launches without a problem. However, after the macro signs me into the site I have a stand-alone Wait for Web Page command that is hanging. Upon deeper research I see that the one that launches without a problem does not have the Wait For box checked.

 

It seems the problem is not necessarily associated with the Web Site command so much as it is with the Wait For command (and the associated Wait For check box within the Web Site command).

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Maybe it's not the macro... does this work on a different machine or same issue?

Like I said, this issue is not consistent. The macro worked fine all day until just before I made my original post. Now it doesn't work at all without the Repeat loop work-around.

 

I have not had this problem on any other machine... but then I don't work on any other machine (and nobody else in my department uses macros nearly as extensively as I do, and don't launch any websites with the macros they do use - besides, I'm still guinea pigging MEP so if the prob is in MEP, they wouldn't be experiencing it anyway.).

 

But as this has happened on several different macros, and because I have rebooted several times with continued problems, I thought it warranted at least mentioning here, and asking if others have had similar problems... I know macros occasionally hang, as there are other posts about it, but I wonder if anybody else has noticed it in direct relation to the Wait For webpage function of various commands.

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Nothing to do with your question but in my experience the wait for web page is not reliable. I always chuckle when FireFox users complain about not having this capability because I too would like this capability to work reliably... in Internet Explorer! And Java and other active scripting adds another dimension of timing hell. When it's important I always rely on my own routines to verify a web page has loaded.

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Nothing to do with your question but in my experience the wait for web page is not reliable. I always chuckle when FireFox users complain about not having this capability because I too would like this capability to work reliably... in Internet Explorer! And Java and other active scripting adds another dimension of timing hell. When it's important I always rely on my own routines to verify a web page has loaded.

 

Steve: I can't help with your specific either, sorry. But if it makes you feel any better I've spent most of this morning increasingly frustrated by what should be a really simple web form-filling macro. This is to enter my gas and electricity meter readings online, in Firefox. The first stage requires 3 boxes filling: electricity account number, gas account number and post code. After using my own pixel-testing macro to wait for the page to be ready, the first box takes 44 tabs to reach, and then each of the other two are just one tab apart. But no matter what delays I use, the macro acted as if it was 'running on' and trying to go to the next web page (to enter the readings). Eventually I abandoned it and re-wrote it using mouse clicks to get the cursor into the boxes, instead of tabbing, and that worked. But I'd love to know why the original tabbing method didn't. :(

 

(The sting in the tail was that, although the macro worked, the site refused to accept my readings. After 20 mins in a phone queue to British Gas I learned that their system had broken!)

 

--

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

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Eventually I abandoned it and re-wrote it using mouse clicks to get the cursor into the boxes, instead of tabbing, and that worked. But I'd love to know why the original tabbing method didn't.
I told you why, it doesn't 'hear' all the tabs and has no buffer:) I actually wrote a macro to test this theory by doing several tab advances and such and found that although the text type command was typing it would occasionally not hear one of them and get out of sync. I created my own simple HTML web form and repeated the same experiment and it was flawless. I think what happens is that they sometimes 'do things' when you type information in and if it gets busy it will sometimes not hear what's being typed.
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I told you why, it doesn't 'hear' all the tabs and has no buffer:) I actually wrote a macro to test this theory by doing several tab advances and such and found that although the text type command was typing it would occasionally not hear one of them and get out of sync. I created my own simple HTML web form and repeated the same experiment and it was flawless. I think what happens is that they sometimes 'do things' when you type information in and if it gets busy it will sometimes not hear what's being typed.

 

Cory, Could you remind me where you explained this please?

 

--

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

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I'm sorry Terry, I guess I didn't. Strange, I swore I wrote up my whole little diddy about how I think Java works or more importantly doesn't work. Must have been a different post.

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