D
Donnie
My company develops a web-based application for the healthcare industry.
While our application by itself is pure asp, we do provide integrated links
into external vendors systems. Up till this point, we have only been using
a 3rd party image viewer product to access images stored in an external
vendors system. This runtime requires the java runtime, and I believe that
the network folks are pushing out Sun Java 1.4 as part of the standard pc
install. External users are required to download and install java
themselves to access this functionality. This viewer works great on 1.4 or
higher . The viewer works on the 1.3 runtime, but with severe performance
issues. Let's refer to this vendor as "Vendor A". Vendor A's image viewer
is nothing more than an applet on an asp page.
Recently, while integrating a 2nd vendors application into our product, we
have come across a potential showstopper. This new vendor requires the 1.3
runtime for their product to work. As part of their download, they push the
1.3 runtime down if it is not already installed - but it does not register
with IE. Let's refer to this vendor as "Vendor B". For Vendor B, we
generate a dynamic URL ( encrypted, time-stamped for security purposes ) and
jump to this URL in a new browser window.
Now, assume that I'm a user of our application - here is what happens...
Let's say that I have Sun Java 1.4 ( or newer ) installed. I log into the
application and navigate to the page where Vendor A's 3rd party image viewer
resides. The viewer loads ( using whatever version of Java is set as the
default for IE, 1.4 in this case ) and displays the image without any issue.
Now, from that same brower session, I navigate to the page with the option
to launch this Vendor B's product. The browser will CRASH.
The same holds true in reverse order. Log in and view Vendor B's product
and everything loads great ( remember, it does not register with IE ). From
that same browser session, jump over to Vendor A's product and CRASH.
We have noticed that if we take the URL to launch the 2nd vendors product,
copy it to the clipboard, start a new instance of IE and paste the URL it
works without any issues. However, if we try to launch the URL from the
same browser session that we used with the image viewer it crashes every
time.
We have even attempted a ShellExecute("iexplore", url) to launch a new
browser session with a separate memory process ( as opposed to a
window.open ). We have thought about the possibility of forcing a downgrade
( ouch ! ! ! ) of Java to 1.3 on the client machines, but that is a big can
of worms to open with regards to support and client relations. This is not
a viable option due to the performance issues with the viewer using 1.3.
Can anybody give me an explanation as to what is going on here with the
browser crashing. I can understand how the window.open confliction could
possibly occur. Why does ShellExecute fail? I can take the javascript that
fires the shellexecute and run it direclty with Windows Script Host and it
runs fine.
While our application by itself is pure asp, we do provide integrated links
into external vendors systems. Up till this point, we have only been using
a 3rd party image viewer product to access images stored in an external
vendors system. This runtime requires the java runtime, and I believe that
the network folks are pushing out Sun Java 1.4 as part of the standard pc
install. External users are required to download and install java
themselves to access this functionality. This viewer works great on 1.4 or
higher . The viewer works on the 1.3 runtime, but with severe performance
issues. Let's refer to this vendor as "Vendor A". Vendor A's image viewer
is nothing more than an applet on an asp page.
Recently, while integrating a 2nd vendors application into our product, we
have come across a potential showstopper. This new vendor requires the 1.3
runtime for their product to work. As part of their download, they push the
1.3 runtime down if it is not already installed - but it does not register
with IE. Let's refer to this vendor as "Vendor B". For Vendor B, we
generate a dynamic URL ( encrypted, time-stamped for security purposes ) and
jump to this URL in a new browser window.
Now, assume that I'm a user of our application - here is what happens...
Let's say that I have Sun Java 1.4 ( or newer ) installed. I log into the
application and navigate to the page where Vendor A's 3rd party image viewer
resides. The viewer loads ( using whatever version of Java is set as the
default for IE, 1.4 in this case ) and displays the image without any issue.
Now, from that same brower session, I navigate to the page with the option
to launch this Vendor B's product. The browser will CRASH.
The same holds true in reverse order. Log in and view Vendor B's product
and everything loads great ( remember, it does not register with IE ). From
that same browser session, jump over to Vendor A's product and CRASH.
We have noticed that if we take the URL to launch the 2nd vendors product,
copy it to the clipboard, start a new instance of IE and paste the URL it
works without any issues. However, if we try to launch the URL from the
same browser session that we used with the image viewer it crashes every
time.
We have even attempted a ShellExecute("iexplore", url) to launch a new
browser session with a separate memory process ( as opposed to a
window.open ). We have thought about the possibility of forcing a downgrade
( ouch ! ! ! ) of Java to 1.3 on the client machines, but that is a big can
of worms to open with regards to support and client relations. This is not
a viable option due to the performance issues with the viewer using 1.3.
Can anybody give me an explanation as to what is going on here with the
browser crashing. I can understand how the window.open confliction could
possibly occur. Why does ShellExecute fail? I can take the javascript that
fires the shellexecute and run it direclty with Windows Script Host and it
runs fine.