Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Firefox 3 beta not working with aprs.fi

Zach Sadecki was the first to let me know that the Firefox 3 beta has some trouble with aprs.fi. I did some testing, and sure enough, it fails sooner or later with some JavaScript errors being printed in the Error Console. It has something to do with the decoding of the XML in the AJAX XMLHttpRequest responses.

I verified the site still works with Firefox 1, Firefox 2, MSIE 6 and 7, Konqueror and Safari, and went to report a bug in the bug tracking system of the Mozilla project, only to find that Zach had already issued Bug 425586 – javascript doesn't run that works fine on firefox 2.0. So, after a bit more testing, I added a comment there. This seems like a FF3 bug to me, one that is a bit hard to work around in aprs.fi code.

Zack also pointed out that the Gecko-based Epiphany browser suffers from the same problem.

It might be useful if you'd happen to find another ajax-based site which suffers from exactly the same problem. Please, drop a comment if you do.

Update: I've installed a workaround for this problem, and it seems to work. I'm re-parsing the AJAX XML using the GXml API.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My problem is likely a different issue... as the aprs.fi site worked fine on my cell phone's Opera browser last fall. But now, I can't make the map appear. I sent you an e-mail with captured screen shots of what I used to get, verses what I get now. I'm using the Motorola E680i cell phone.

- Mark Rice
KK5MR (previously N4CMB)

Unknown said...

Just got a "log-on"... so now i'm legitimate.

:>

Mark Rice
KK5MR

CT1AKV said...

Here on Firefox 3 (under Windows XP)aprs.fi stops updating. It needs manual refresh to update. Not reporting javascript error on the screan.
On FF2 (under linux), it works fine.

- F.Guerra (ct1akv)