SmartClient vs Firefox 17

[ssousa]

Hi,

I have downloaded the beta version of Firefox (Firefox 17), and I can't launch my application. When I load it, I get errors:

- TypeError : isc.Button is undefined ....
- TypeError : isc.ScrollThumb is undefined ....
- ...

I tried it with SmartClient v8.0 and v8.3, it's the same result.
Have you got any solution ?

Thanks.

[Isomorphic]

Don't use beta versions of Firefox.

It's not uncommon for beta versions to be broken enough that they break all sorts of common pages and frameworks.

[ssousa]

Sure. But as it is announced to be released on November 20, we have waited until this last Beta release before contacting SC support...
Our own support team does test beta versions of every browser, to ensure that our app still works.

We did not have to deal with such problems on previous beta versions of Firefox major releases (FF15b, FF16b).

[Isomorphic]

We haven't had a Firefox release break the framework since Mozilla 1.2 (pre-dates Firefox), and that release was yanked because it broke everyone else too.

In general, attempting to work around bugs in beta browsers has been a waste of time that can easily backfire if the bug is fixed at the last minute, and the workaround either fails or has performance consequences.

If the final release really breaks the framework, we'll prepare an immediate patch.

If you feel it's important enough, you could submit a bug to Firefox bug tracker notifying them that that the current beta breaks a commonly used framework.

[ssousa]

Firefox v17 is now available as a stable release.

When trying to launch examples on your website (www.smartclient.com/#Welcome), the "Loading Features Explorer" message box remains on "Loading 343 samples", and we get following errors in JS console :
- "TypeError:isc.Page is undefined"
- "TypeError:_2.getPrototype is not a function"
- "TypeError:isc.Button is undefined".

Such errors did not occur on FF16.0.2, but were exactly the same on beta versions of FF17.

[testsdk]

I use FF 10 ESR which is the extended support release of FF that only receives security and stability updates rather than all the new major version churn:

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

[ssousa]

I use FF 10 ESR which is the extended support release of FF that only receives security and stability updates rather than all the new major version churn:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

I may be misunderstanding your answer : do you suggest we ask our end-users to downgrade their version of Firefox ?
If so : our smartclient-based platform is made for individuals who connect to our website with any browser we certify : IE (8 and later), FF (9 and later), Chrome (16 and later), Safari (5 and later).

[ssousa]

If the final release really breaks the framework, we'll prepare an immediate patch.

Any clue on the ETA for this patch ?

[Isomorphic]

The issue was fixed yesterday morning for all builds.

[ssousa]

The issue was fixed yesterday morning for all builds.

Also on SC 8.0 ? The download page still refers to "Previous release (01/05/2011)".

[Isomorphic]

Are you just asking out of curiosity? That's 3 releases behind and doesn't have (and won't have) various key fixes for bugs introduced in IE9.

[ssousa]

Thanks for such a professional answer.

No time for curiosity : we are currently using SC v8.0 in a professional area, because it worked quite well until then. We can't update it with every release you make, unless we test our platform from square 1.
We thought major bugs like the FF17 one would be supported on v8.0 too, specially with the support level we purchased... We also hoped that warning you as soon as we experienced this bug on Beta version of FF could be "rewarded" by taking our request in consideration.

We are currently downloading v8.1, but our development team will have to test it before installing it on our end-user platform, to make sure there's no regression on SC tools we use. Meanwhile, end-users using FF17 won't be able to connect to our platform.

Regards.

[Isomorphic]

Professional release planning on the web platform requires planning to update infrastructure software fairly frequently. New releases of browsers have lots of bugs and we cannot update every prior release of our software to fix them - sometimes the fixes are very involved, as was the case with some of IE9's spectacular regressions (like eval() being broken, with no workaround).

For that reason, the best outcome is to move to 8.3 now - there's not really a good reason to move to just 8.1.

Regardless, we do plan to release a patch for 8.0.

[ssousa]

We chose v8.1 because it was the closest to the version currently used here, but it could be indeed the good time to move on the latest version.

However, we'll wait a little more, as the patch you released does not seem to be 100% functional with "Firefox beta 18" (please take a look to the enclosed print-screen).

[Isomorphic]

There is now a patch available for Firefox 17 and greater running against older SmartClient / SmartGWT builds available here

Regards
Isomorphic Software