Quickr relies heavily upon Javascript for dyanamic creation
of browser content. At times, this presents a problem to the troubleshooting
process because much of the information needed to undestand the problem
exists only at runtime. In the past, information needed to understand
client side problems was accessible in the page source. Thus, a support
engineer could review the static HTML content of the page to locate the
problem. Because so much content in Quickr is generated through Javascript,
reviewing the static HTML is often not enough to troubleshoot browser based
issues.
How do I know this is a browser issue?
Normally, the browser will inform you if a scripting error
has occured. In Firefox, the following error may be seen 
.
In Internet Explorer, you may see 
.
Either by single or double clicking both respective icons will provide
more information to support; however, this information is often not enough
to diagnose a problem.
Firebug.
If the problem is reproducible in Firefox, a Firefox add
on called Firebug
is invaluable in obtaining more technical information. With Firebug,
users can review HTML source, Javascript code, browser traffic, and the
document object model (DOM) at run time. The last point is one of
the most powerful features. Since much of Quickr's content is generated
with Javascript after the browser initially loads the page, being able
to review and manipulate these updates is often required to diagnose browser
side problems.
Examples.
So how might you use Firebug to troubleshoot. Below
are some real issues located using Firebug.
1. APAR LO3799 desribes and issues where search results
simply refresh the browser when clicked. The actual problem is that
the href attribute contains no link. The browser handles this by
linking to the existing page, which gives the illusion that the page is
being refreshed. Using Firebug's inspect element option, you can
review the HTML code. Hover over a search result, right mouse click,
and select the inspect element option. You can see that the anchor
tag has a hyperlink. Prior to the APAR the href attribute had no
hyperlink, which was an obvious problem.
2. The Feed Reader portlet makes asynchronous requests
to a proxy servlet in the Feed Reader's web module. If you've ever
wondered why the feed icon continuously spins, it might be because the
feed can not be obtained. Technically, this is not a browser issue
per se, but you can review the AJAX traffic to verify if the feed content
is sent to the browser. In Firefox, select Tools -> Open Firebug
and select the Net tab. You can further narrow what Net traffic to
review, for example, the XHR filter is used to demonstrate the AJAX request
to Portal to obtain the displayed feed. An error is normally indicated
by a red request such as a 404 or 500 error returned by the server.
3. The Net feature is also very helpful when using reverse
proxies such as Tivoli Access Manager (TAM). You may notice that
requests to a particular directory is not listed as a junction in TAM.
One such request may be "ecmintg".
4. Quotation marks in Javascript need to be handled properly.
For example, the French word c'est placed incorrectly in Javascript
can cause other features in Quickr to fail on the same page. You
can use Firebug to locate the error and dynamically update the HTML by
single clicking the attribute or values in HTML elements. Thus, you
can make changes to the DOM in real time and test the failing function.
Hopefully, you now understand the problem that browser
side issues present and how Firebug can assist in the troubleshooting process.
What Do I Provide Support?
Generally, the following information is needed to understand
browser side issues when hands on interaction is not available.
1. A
screenshot of the issue as it occurs in the browser.
2. If
error icons exist 
,
select the icon to reveal the error message(s) and provide a screenshot
of the message(s) or the error console.
3. The
HTML from Firebug. You can obtain this by opening the HTML tab, right
mouse clicking on the tag, and selecting Copy HTML. Be sure to copy
the HTML into Wordpad or a text editor that retains the formatting.