re: HOW and what we know about the iframe problem

> ***************************************** > function loadNotes() > { > // Notes buffer for user notes to display on this page > > document.write( > '<iframe name="nbuff" id=nbuff style="display:none" > src="about:blank"></iframe>' > ); > nbuff.location = 'c:/php_manual_notes/' + chmfile_page; > file://'<a href="c:/php_manual_notes/' + chmfile_page + '" target="nbuff">Expand > User Notes!</a>' > > } > ***************************************** The problem with this is that you specify a non-existent page outside any CHM, which of course works. See test2.html in the iframetests.zip file. Thus far, we know that: - if a document is loaded from a CHM file - into an iframe - and it's nonexistent - and the user's browser is IE6 (or IE 5.5 as one reported) - and "Show friendly HTTP error messages" is set to off the error message shows up in the main document window, instead of the iframe. If the iframe src is not in a CHM or the browser is not IE6 (or IE 5.5) or the friendly msgs are on there is no problem. Test1.html and test2.html does not in line with the first requirement (they load a document from outside a CHM). Test3 and test4 are in line with this, and test4 is the one showing the error message. Test5 is a try to use the ms-its protocol in hope that it won't be bogus, but it is... Test6 is a try to modify the src, but that even unable to work in IE5 ;) Test7 and test8 are tries to modify the location. These are new so the behaviour of them are not confirmed. Test7 does not work on my machine for some reason, though it should... Test9 and test10 are tries to ommit the CHM protocol, but that of course means that the file cannot be loaded and thus they does not work. So the actual method we use is used in test4 (except that the file name is of course dinamically computed from the actually showed HTML file name, but that of course should not change anything as the whole thing is written out using JS). As far as I can see know, this is all I can say about our problem. On machines meeting the points above pages without user notes are not displayed. Some possible solution proposals, and why they are not OK: - Merge the two CHM files into one <=> Anyone can read the search chapter in the HTML Help section of the current CHM to see how many benefits we have with this split. In addition we would not like to host the size of the user notes for every language in the future, when this manual will be available in all the languages, and would not like to spare that bandwidth. - Put a 0bytes page for every page without notes into the notes CHM <=> We cannot guarantee that we can put a pair for every page because users will be able to upgrade the CHMs separately, and there are many langauges with the possibility to add their own pages... - Put notes into a real frame <=> Every time a page is loaded from the index tab, search tab, favorites tab, contents tab or from outside the CHM [an IDE], we would need to force the page into one frame, and it would take time as well as more JS magic, so I would not like to go on that way. - Turn on that friendly registry setting when CHM starts up and turn back to it's original value after closed <=> It's impossible to write into the registry in DHTML luckily ;) So we tried and/or discussed several possibilities, but were unable to find any solution for the problem (which is of course not a bug in our code, but simply a bug in Internet Explorer). Doh. Goba