FMP9A a bit wobbly with web viewer?

[Rowland Carson]

I've recently been experimenting with the web viewer capability in FMP9A.

[slight digression]

I was led to this in 2 ways.

First, by the latest version of iCab, which now behaves in the same
unhelpful way as most other browsers when a HTML table is selected
and copied to the clipboard - the cell delimiters are remdered as
returns as well as the row delimiters. In all previous versions of
iCab, the cell delimiters were tabs, which made it easy to create a
tab-text file for import to a FMP file. Now that I can't do it that
way, I have created a screen-scraper to do the job instead - which of
course is much easier and faster overall than the tab-text import now
that I've got it working. The hardest bit was writing the custom
functions to extract each data cell.

Second, I was trying to create a progress indicator along the lines
of those in Ray Cologon's FMP9 Bible. That was less successful - all
the examples I've seen use a loop counter to simulate FMP activity,
but when real work is being done such as in a sub-script, the
progress bar doesn't get updated very effectively.

[end of digression]

I've suffered several instances of "Filemaker has unexpectedly quit"
which has rather un-nerved me. I can't remember a previous version of
FMP which did that to me. I have noted that all such incidents
occurred when I was working on developing a file with a web viewer
object present, and not (so far) with any other file which does not
have a web viewer object. I wasn't necessarily doing interacting with
the web viewer at the time, and I can't at the moment identify any
other pattern.

Has anyone else noticed this sort of instability, and is there a fix for it?

Ti PowerBook G4 1GHz, 1GB RAM, Mac OS 10.4.11
FMP9A 9.0v3

regards

Rowland
--
| Wilma & Rowland Carson    http://home.clara.net/rowil/
| <rowil@...>          ... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...

[C. J. Weigand-2]

Rowland,

> I've suffered several instances of "Filemaker has unexpectedly quit"  
> which has rather un-nerved me. I can't remember a previous version  
> of FMP which did that to me. I have noted that all such incidents  
> occurred when I was working on developing a file with a web viewer  
> object present, and not (so far) with any other file which does not  
> have a web viewer object. I wasn't necessarily doing interacting  
> with the web viewer at the time, and I can't at the moment identify  
> any other pattern.
>
> Has anyone else noticed this sort of instability, and is there a fix  
> for it?

Yes, I've had this problem for some time. I'm not sure of the cause,  
but the workarounds are as follows:

1. Make frequent backups as you work

2. After using the Internet, make sure FileMaker Pro is quit before  
using it again.

3. Also, after sleeping your computer or being away from it for any  
extended period of time, similarly make sure FileMaker Pro is quit  
before using it again.

While steps 2 and 3 have reduced the incidences to nearly zero, they  
haven't eliminated them entirely. I think it's primarily an operating  
system problem since it also occasionally occurs with other  
applications. But exactly what the cause is, I can't say.

Fortunately, I haven't lost any data or needed to recover (except  
once) in the last couple of years. Nevertheless, I'm very cautious. I  
figure it's best to err on the side of safety. FileMaker and Apple  
both have refused to break their silence on this problem, which leads  
me to suspect that they just don't know either. Intermittent problems,  
after all, are the most difficult to troubleshoot.

Regards... CJ

Life $uccess Institute
356 Salem Turnpike
Bozrah, CT 06334-1518

[phone]
LifeSuccess@...
http://www.LifeSuccess.org


On Jul 22, 2008, at 3:34 PM, Rowland Carson wrote:

> I've recently been experimenting with the web viewer capability in  
> FMP9A.
>
> [slight digression]
>
> I was led to this in 2 ways.
>
> First, by the latest version of iCab, which now behaves in the same  
> unhelpful way as most other browsers when a HTML table is selected  
> and copied to the clipboard - the cell delimiters are remdered as  
> returns as well as the row delimiters. In all previous versions of  
> iCab, the cell delimiters were tabs, which made it easy to create a  
> tab-text file for import to a FMP file. Now that I can't do it that  
> way, I have created a screen-scraper to do the job instead - which  
> of course is much easier and faster overall than the tab-text import  
> now that I've got it working. The hardest bit was writing the custom  
> functions to extract each data cell.
>
> Second, I was trying to create a progress indicator along the lines  
> of those in Ray Cologon's FMP9 Bible. That was less successful - all  
> the examples I've seen use a loop counter to simulate FMP activity,  
> but when real work is being done such as in a sub-script, the  
> progress bar doesn't get updated very effectively.
>
> [end of digression]
>
> I've suffered several instances of "Filemaker has unexpectedly quit"  
> which has rather un-nerved me. I can't remember a previous version  
> of FMP which did that to me. I have noted that all such incidents  
> occurred when I was working on developing a file with a web viewer  
> object present, and not (so far) with any other file which does not  
> have a web viewer object. I wasn't necessarily doing interacting  
> with the web viewer at the time, and I can't at the moment identify  
> any other pattern.
>
> Has anyone else noticed this sort of instability, and is there a fix  
> for it?
>
> Ti PowerBook G4 1GHz, 1GB RAM, Mac OS 10.4.11
> FMP9A 9.0v3
>
> regards
>
> Rowland
> --
> | Wilma & Rowland Carson    http://home.clara.net/rowil/
> | <rowil@...>          ... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...