Common Problems Using The File Manager

This page is part of the WebCom File Manager documentation. It provides information on problems commonly experienced when attempting to use the File Manager with a less than fully compatible Web browser.

Comments on Specific Browsers

General Problems

A number of WWW browsers do not properly support the mechanism used to load the text of a file onto the screen for editing purposes.

Problems that may occur:

Text of loaded file does not appear in editing box.

The browser used to access this file does not support pre-placement of text within a TextArea field.

Parts of the HTML file being edited appear as part of the editing page and not in the editing box.

The browser used to access this file is interpreting the tags within the editied file instead of displaying the plain text or HTML source of the file.

Entities, such as &< and &&, appear with spaces between the & and the rest of the entity.

Some browsers (Netscape for instance) insist on rendering entities within TextArea tags, even when the source itself is an entity. These spaces are inserted to ensure the entity appears in the editing box.

Checkboxes fail to appear towards the end of a long directory listing, and/or the options buttons at the bottom of the form fail to appear.

Your browser cannot display a form of this length and complexity.

Please contact the company or organization that provides your browser and ask them to correct any observed problems.

Comments on Tested Browsers

Web Communications has standardized on Windows as its desktop operating system, so the following comments only apply to the Windows versions of each browser. If you have comments or feedback regarding browsers used on other platforms, please send us your input.

Netscape from Netscape Communications

Netscape is the only browser we've tested which fully supports editing and creating files with the WebCom File Manager.

We have observed problems with Netscape when a directory containing a large number of files is listed: files toward the end of the listing lack checkboxes before them, and thus their permissions cannot be be changed and they can not be deleted using the File Manager.

Netscape insists on rendering entities within the TextArea field, even when the source itself is an entity. We have programatically compensated for this, so any entities within it will appear with a space between the ampersand (&) and the entity name. There is no need to delete these spaces, as we have programmatically taken care of that as well.

NCSA Mosaic

NCSA Mosaic does not support the editing of files. Attempting to saving a file may cause your system to crash.

We have observed problems with NCSA Mosaic when a directory containing a large number of files is listed: it seems to "hang" (get stuck in a loop) when attempting to display files towards the end of the listing.

NetCruiser

We have not tested this browser, but it has been reported that when you attempt to change permissions or delete files, that you are returned to the WebCom login prompt. This could be due to NetCruiser not supportin "hidden" form fields properly, which the File Manager uses to store login "state" information (your userid and encrypted password). The File Listing Screen may also be distorted. Some users have also reported problems using the editing function when Netscape is used with the Netcruiser Internet Access package.

AirMosaic from Spry

AirMosaic does not support editing files. It places the contents of the file to be edited outside of the text editing box, on the page itself.

AirMosaic has very noticable problems displaying directories containing large numbers of files. This causes the browser to appear to "hang" (get stuck in a loop), however, if you wait long enough, you will generally be able to return to a previous page.

WinWeb from EIT

We experienced significant problems attempted to use the File Manager with WinWeb. WinWeb "crashed" repeatedly during testing and performed significantly slower than other browsers at basic tasks, such as listing files and loading files. We do not recommend using WinWeb with the File Manager at all.

WinWeb does support changing permissions and deleting files. However, to see the checkboxes, the screen must first be scrolled.

WinWeb frequently crashed while attempting to load files into the File Editing Screen. When files are successfully loaded, text files are displayed properly, but HTML files are displayed without the embedded HTML codes. WinWeb does not support saving files.

We have observed problems with WinWeb when a directory containing a large number of files is listed: files toward the end of the listing lack checkboxes before them, and thus their permissions cannot be be changed and they can not be deleted using the File Manager.

Lynx

Lynx supports a limited subset of the File Manager's capabilities fairly well. You should have no difficulty creating, deleting, and managing permissions of files and directories with Lynx. Editing and creating files with Lynx is possible, but made difficult by the necessity of backspacing and retyping a line to correct errors, in ability to insert new lines and delete lines, etc. If you are using a "shell" account to access WebCom, we recommend that you use wedit in combination with wftp (WebCom FTP) to readily edit your WebCom files.