Known Issue with Chrome 83?

[godonnell_ip]

I have observed a problem with SmartClient applications (including the SmartClient ShowCase) running in Chrome v83.0.4103.77 on Chrome OS and wondered if anyone else had observed this same behavior.

I have tried on two different makes & models of Chromebook, have disabled all extensions and tried in both guest and incognito modes. This problem does not occur in Chrome v83.0.4103.97 running on Windows 10. I assume it is a Chrome issue, but thought you would be interested if you are anticipating providing support to Chrome OS users. It is probably worth me mentioning that all was working well until my Chromebooks updated to v83.0.4103.77 within the last week or so.

The problem is most easily observed by navigating to the SmartClient ShowCase and attempting to navigate around it using mouse or touchpad. The only controls that can be clicked on and expected to function as intended are the search text items and the link buttons in the right pane. The tree in the left pane can be scrolled, but can not be collapsed or any of the options selected. Similarly, none of the filter checkboxes respond to being clicked and none of the examples are highlighted in the tile grid when hovering or selected when clicking.

It is possible to navigate to some degree using the keyboard (at least in this way the filter checkboxes can be selected and de-selected and the number of examples slider modified). However, I still cannot reliably determine how to select an example.

The SmartClient Reference, and indeed our own applications, are suffering in the same way.

Thanks for any comments or insight that might be offered.

[Isomorphic]

We're not able to reproduce the problems you report, though we only had access to Chrome OS on a simulator.

Can you evaluate the following expression, either by adding it inside an alert() in a Showcase sample or by using the browser console?

[navigator.userAgent, isc.Browser.isChrome, isc.Browser.version, isc.Browser.isDesktop,
isc.Browser.isMobile, isc.Browser.isHandset, isc.Browser.isTouch, isc.Browser.supportsDualInput,
isc.Browser.pointerEnabled, isc.Browser.hasDualInput, isc.Browser.isAndroid]

[godonnell_ip]

Thanks for the response. What a great question! - I cannot do this within the Showcase on Chrome OS because of the problems I described above :-)

I can, of course, evaluate it in the browser debugger, which is what I did here:

[navigator.userAgent, isc.Browser.isChrome, isc.Browser.version, isc.Browser.isDesktop,
isc.Browser.isMobile, isc.Browser.isHandset, isc.Browser.isTouch, isc.Browser.supportsDualInput,
isc.Browser.pointerEnabled, isc.Browser.hasDualInput, isc.Browser.isAndroid]
(11) ["Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 13020.55.0) AppleWeb…ML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.77 Safari/537.36", true, 83, true,
false, false, true, false,
false, false, false]

[Isomorphic]

From your initial description, it sounds like your Chromebook has a touchpad, keyboard, and external mouse? Does it have a touch screen? Browsers handle touch screen interaction differently than mouse input, but most laptops treat touchpad interaction similar to a mouse, and are treated as "desktop" systems rather than mobile (tablet/handset).

In your case, it seems that Browser.isTouch, which should only be set for touch screen/mobile systems, is getting set true unexpectedly. Can you evaluate the following expression to gather more information for us?

[( 'ontouchstart' in window ), navigator.maxTouchPoints]

For a temporary fix, can you evaluate this?

isc.Browser.isTouch = false;

Does that resolve any of the issues you reported?

[godonnell_ip]

Oh, you guys are good! Both Chromebooks that I tried have touch screens and touchpads, but no mouse attached.

The result of the evaluation you asked for is:

(2) [false, 10]

...and when I evaluate the temporary fix, I find I can now navigate as expected in both the SmartClient Reference and SmartClient ShowCase applications via touchpad. I assume the same is true of our own applications, and you can be sure I'll let you know if it's not. However (as you probably expect) touch screen navigation is not working properly. I can scroll lists, but cannot select or otherwise invoke click-based functionality.

Should we expect some kind of fix to be committed for this, or will we have to code our own workaround into our apps?

[Isomorphic]

We've made a change to SC 12.1 and newer branches to attempt to detect Chrome OS and enable "dual input" mode which allows both mouse and touch input to drive the framework. This will be in the nightly builds dated 2020-06-17 and beyond.

For reference, we'd like the exact user agent string. The one you reported above is truncated in the middle. Can you evaluate navigator.userAgent again and give us the complete, untruncated output?

[godonnell_ip]

Here you go, thanks:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.97 Safari/537.36

Sorry not to have noticed that sooner.

Does that mean no change will be applied to v11.1?

[Isomorphic]

Dual input mode is only supported back to SC 12.0, so touch screen input in this situation wouldn't be supported in SC 11.1. However, we'd try to fix things being broken entirely (i.e. so at least mouse/touchpad works).

However, first, can you try out the latest download and report whether it solves your problem? Or you could just navigate to the online showcase

[godonnell_ip]

Still the same problems with the online showcase, I'm afraid.

And just to confirm, I am using touchpad to navigate in all cases I have discussed so far in this thread, not touch screen.

[Isomorphic]

Here you go, thanks:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.97 Safari/537.36

That's not consistent with the truncated user agent string you posted earlier. Is your Chromebook really running Windows 10?

When you load the showcase here, can you evaluate the following expression in the developer console?

isc.Browser.isChromeOS

[godonnell_ip]

Well, you've correctly diagnosed me as an idiot. I was on my Chromebook but was running a full screen remote desktop session to a Windows machine when I evaluated that. Sometimes I just forget which machine I'm actually working on... My apologies - the correct string follows:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 13020.55.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.77 Safari/537.36

...and the other you asked for evaluates as:

true

I'll just confirm for you before you ask: yes, the failures I have been observing have been when I have been working with Chrome on ChromeOS. Everything is working fine for me via Chrome on Windows 10.

[Isomorphic]

An additional fix was added to the SC 12.1 and newer branches in the nightly builds dated 2020-06-20 and beyond. If you direct your browser to our online showcase, you should be able to check whether this resolves the issue you reported.

[godonnell_ip]

Yes, indeed - all appears to be working well on ChromeOS, including touch screen.

Thanks for your attention to this.

[Isomorphic]

Does that mean no change will be applied to v11.1?

We've just ported the full fix (mouse/touchpad + touch screen) to SC 12.0p, but upon checking SC 11.1p, which was going to receive a lesser fix targeting just mouse interaction (since dual input isn't supported in that release), we found no issue. That is, mouse/touchpad interaction should be working fine in SC 11.1p right now, though your touch screen isn't supported.

Are you seeing something else there?