Very Computer

First, thanks to the WebExplorer team for a fine browser. But it's not perfect.

All versions of Webexplorer have had this 100% reproducible problem, ever
since proxy support was introduced in an early beta. Just tried it with
1.03a and the bug is still there.

If you load a particular web page (inside a corporate firewall) with proxy
on, that web page will no longer load with proxy off during the current
WebExplorer session. You get an immediate message: "Error 404: Not found -
file does not exist or is read protected [even tried multi]". Turn proxy
back on and the page will load. Leave proxy off, close and restart
WebExplorer, and the page will load just fine with proxy off.

New pages will load OK with proxy off. But once you've touched a page with
proxy on, it's dead with proxy off. For example, load a page with proxy
off, turn proxy on, reload the page with proxy on, and both loads work
fine. Turn proxy off again, try to reload, and it's Error 404.

It's not the end of the world, but it's a major annoyance. I often want to
reload a page after turning proxy off. Internal pages have links to
external sites, so I often browse with proxy turned on. However access to
internal pages is usually faster with proxy turned off. So I turn off
proxy when I get slow access to an internal page, but then I can't
backtrack to any previous page that I happened to load through the proxy.

Also, if anyone has tried to download a particular file through the proxy
and has interrupted the transfer, everyone seems to get the truncated
version until the proxy clears its cache after a day or two (no error
message, you just get a partial transfer that seems OK until you try to
use the file). That's a bug in the proxy not in WebEx, but the WebEx bug
makes it worse. Even if the file is available with proxy off, I have to
close WebEx (and lose my WebMap history) before I can load it.

If this bug is below the line on priority for an early fix, how about
making it unimportant by implementing a no-proxy list with wildcards that
will let me suppress proxy for entire subnets by either IP numeric address
or domain name. (Netscape handles domain names properly but not numeric
subnets).
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Quote:>All versions of Webexplorer have had this 100% reproducible problem, ever
>since proxy support was introduced in an early beta. Just tried it with
>1.03a and the bug is still there.

Indeed it's not a bug in programing! I think it's a bug in documentation!

They should really really documentated that you have to fill in the
html-address of a proxy.
e.g. in my proxy -entry this line works.
http://www.th-darmstadt.de:80/
where www.th-darmstadt.de is  the proxy-server
and 80 is the port.

Quote:>If you load a particular web page (inside a corporate firewall) with proxy
>on, that web page will no longer load with proxy off during the current
>WebExplorer session. You get an immediate message: "Error 404: Not found -
>file does not exist or is read protected [even tried multi]". Turn proxy
>back on and the page will load. Leave proxy off, close and restart
>WebExplorer, and the page will load just fine with proxy off.
>New pages will load OK with proxy off. But once you've touched a page with
>proxy on, it's dead with proxy off. For example, load a page with proxy
>off, turn proxy on, reload the page with proxy on, and both loads work
>fine. Turn proxy off again, try to reload, and it's Error 404.

this will finish whith the suggestion above

Quote:>It's not the end of the world, but it's a major annoyance. I often want to
>reload a page after turning proxy off. Internal pages have links to
>external sites, so I often browse with proxy turned on. However access to
>internal pages is usually faster with proxy turned off. So I turn off
>proxy when I get slow access to an internal page, but then I can't
>backtrack to any previous page that I happened to load through the proxy.

>Also, if anyone has tried to download a particular file through the proxy
>and has interrupted the transfer, everyone seems to get the truncated
>version until the proxy clears its cache after a day or two (no error
>message, you just get a partial transfer that seems OK until you try to
>use the file). That's a bug in the proxy not in WebEx, but the WebEx bug
>makes it worse. Even if the file is available with proxy off, I have to
>close WebEx (and lose my WebMap history) before I can load it.

Sorry, I cant help whith this one.

Quote:>If this bug is below the line on priority for an early fix, how about
>making it unimportant by implementing a no-proxy list with wildcards that
>will let me suppress proxy for entire subnets by either IP numeric address
>or domain name. (Netscape handles domain names properly but not numeric
>subnets).

The no-proxy field at netscape is not too bad indeed! I missed it in webexplorer.

I hope it helps, Tom

Actually since the checkbox was added to disable the proxy. (0331 beta?)

Quote:> Indeed it's not a bug in programing! I think it's a bug in documentation!

No, you are thinking of the FAQ in this newsgroup where the proxy does
not work at all - because the / is left off the end, and/or the
http:// off the front.  This is a seperate problem which IBM
acknowledged several versions ago.  I posted a list of several bugs in
proxy support several months ago.  The documentation bug was one, the
page failing to load after the proxy is disabled if it was loaded
(even unsuccessfully, as the case may be if your proxy server is not setup
well) with the proxy enabled, was another.  Another known bug is that
pages on the same host as the proxy do not load.  This can be worked
around by specifying a port number (80) for the proxy, or by using a
different alias for the proxy than you usually use to access pages on
that host.

Quote:>> If this bug is below the line on priority for an early fix, how about
>> making it unimportant by implementing a no-proxy list with wildcards that
>> will let me suppress proxy for entire subnets by either IP numeric address
>> or domain name. (Netscape handles domain names properly but not numeric
>> subnets).

A long overdue enhancement.  Of course, both this, and fixes for the
other proxy bugs would be most welcome.

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I'd like you to meet yourself.  I hope you both get along.
        - Jah Wobble

I guess I was not very clear in describing my problem.

I do use a full URL for the proxy, and it works perfectly. The problem is
with sites that I can reach with or without using proxy. If I look at a
page with proxy turned on, then turn proxy off (uncheck the Enable Proxy
checkbox), and look at that same page, I get Error 404. Yet if I close and
restart Webexplorer with proxy turned off, I can view that same page
without proxy.

At first I thought that turning proxy off during a session made all pages
stop working, but that's not true. I can still access any page inside the
firewall if I have not viewed it with proxy on during the same Webex
session. This strongly suggests that the problem is in the handling of the
visited pages list (webmap). It has always had other problems too,
particularly not distinguishing between different anchors in the same
page.
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