FireFox Plug-in Issue: No validation.

[jbottero]

Concerning the FireFox plug-in, there is no Validator output. Though the tabs and boxes are there below the source view, no validation takes place. Am I doing something wrong?

[Albert Wiersch]

Hello,

Does this happen on every page?

Please go to http://www.htmlvalidator.com/ and click on the "H" in Firefox's status bar. Does the source show with the validation results?

[MikeGale]

I've not used the Firefox addon recently. After reading this thread I decided to run it again.

I also got no results.

Details:

Firefox 2.0.0.11.
Addon 1.2.3 (seems to be latest)
OS Win 2003 patched up to date.

First time I pressed the H button (on the suggested page), I got no display but the page was refetched multiple times as indicated by activity in the status bar and changes to the image displayed.

I went to another page (activity eventually stopped), Google, ran a search and ended up on the HTMLVal page that lists the add-on. When I pressed the H again nothing visible happened.

I shut Firefox, restarted it, same page, still nothing.

(CSE under the UI and more often under the batch processor runs all the time on this machine so it seems solid. Version 8.0403.)

[jbottero]

Concerning the FireFox plug-in, there is no Validator output. Though the tabs and boxes are there below the source view, no validation takes place. Am I doing something wrong?

Yes, every page.

As above with MikeGale.

[MikeGale]

I've run a couple of simple tests and can give further details as follows:

1) A web site based on "localhost" validates as expected, every time on every page tested.

2) A local web site, accessed via local DNS system, does not. (These sites are probably indistinguishable from sites on the "outside Internet", to most software.)

3) Sites on the Internet also don't validate.

Could be some sort of permissions issue.

[Lou]

Hello,

Does this happen on every page?

Please go to http://www.htmlvalidator.com/ and click on the "H" in Firefox's status bar. Does the source show with the validation results?

Just loaded ver 1.2.3 of the add on to 2.0.0.11 of Firefox, CSE 8.0403 (pro)

Seems to work for me (running XP last updates 2 days ago)
By default the add on's first 4 option are checked and the last 2 are not.

the htmlvalidator.com page checks with out errors (surprise surprise)
This page (while adding comment) get the following
1 the little running window at the top of the screen
2 the the CSE window with standard 3 pains
3 when I close that the errors/warning count replaces the H in status bar.

Ran it agents a local file loaded in a different tab works
tried some other web pages (they have errors) seems to work fine.

Where else should I look to locate the problem.

Lou

[MikeGale]

A little detective work and I found where the add-on was hiding on the drive.

Uninstalled it.

Restarted Firefox. It was indeed gone.

Re-installed the add-on.

Now it works on some sites but not others. I haven't figured out the pattern, but the HTMLVal page is still one that fails. (Some of the failing pages seem to automatically update, that might be a factor. Another candidate, XMLHttp/AJAX use.)

Conclusions:

1) The add-on did go flaky. (Maybe the Firefox update process??)

2) It's better but still flaky. More sites fail than work.

[jbottero]

Well, when I clicky on the Validate icon in the lower right of the FireFox status bar (or "view source"), I get a message that it isn't installed properly.

So I've uninstalled it, restarted FireFox, reinstalled it, restarted FireFox, and...

I still get the message.

I'm running the FireFox 2.0.0.11 on XP Pro SP2...

To me, this says the downloaded file is bad or does not function with changes in FireFox 2.0.0.11.

[Lou]

2) It's better but still flaky. More sites fail than work.

Do you mean that the validator does not work for more sites than it works
or
the validator indicates that more sites fail (to validate) that process without errors or warning?

if the first could you give 2 or 3 URLs that fail so I can see what you mean?

If the second why are you surprised?

[Albert Wiersch]

Well, when I clicky on the Validate icon in the lower right of the FireFox status bar (or "view source"), I get a message that it isn't installed properly.

So I've uninstalled it, restarted FireFox, reinstalled it, restarted FireFox, and...

I still get the message.

I'm running the FireFox 2.0.0.11 on XP Pro SP2...

To me, this says the downloaded file is bad or does not function with changes in FireFox 2.0.0.11.

Do you have CSE HTML Validator installed (not just the Firefox Add-on)? If so, did you install it with an account with admin privileges?

It seems to work for me with Firefox 2.0.0.11.

[jbottero]

I *did* have the "Lite" Validator version installed. But with several tabs active, FireFox tended to freeze after I installed it, so I had to uninstall it. That and I found the progeress bar that popped up for every new page a bit annoying (but that's just my preference, the freezing issue was unacceptable).

But isn't the FireFox plug-in "stand-alone"?

[Lou]

That and I found the progeress bar that popped up for every new page a bit annoying (but that's just my preference, the freezing issue was unacceptable).

Yes it is your preferences.
In Firefox go to <Tools>, <Add on> select the HTML validator

Select <OPTION> make sure the "Automatic validation" is not checked.

With 'Auto' un checked it will only validate a page when you click the "H" in the right hand end of the status bar. that may help you FF freeze issue.

No the plug-in is not stand-alone. The write-up says "Requires CSE HTML Validator for Windows."

[MikeGale]

What an interesting idea Lou, that I would change the subject of the discussion.

No I didn't change what we were talking about.

I had another shot at finding out what was happening. I restarted my machine before re-running some tests.

The only site I could remember working before was interclue. In the previous test I got something like 3 fired the validation and 5 didn't.

This time it was worse.

Listing follows:

Sites that fired a validation:
http://localhost/
http://127.0.0.1/
http://interclue.com/

Sites that didn't:

http://www.htmlvalidator.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx
http://www.axtools.com/
http://www.2day.com/home.aspx
http://technology.newscientist.com/arti ... -time.html
http://technology.newscientist.com/arti ... dings.html
http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=47&aid=78683

It looks like a machine specific issue. The success on some sites is weird though.

[Lou]

Mike,
I did not intend to accuse you of something a nefarious as trying to hijack a thread. You are experiencing a problem I am having trouble duplicating. I just wanted to be sure my small brain understood what you meant. (now back to the program in progress)

Sites that fired a validation:
http://localhost/
http://127.0.0.1/
http://interclue.com/

localhost and 127.0.0.1 machine/local network dependent. So obviously the pages we are looking at will not be the same. However, I did look at things like, a printer interface (http://192.168.1.3), router page (http://192.168.1.1), web pages residing on disk (file:///C:/directory/filename.html) and didn't have any issues.

Interclue.com also seemed to validate ok. Well with 9 errors and 6 warnings, but every thing seemed to work the way it should.

Sites that didn't:
Again the HTMLValidator web page validated without errors as I found before. All the others seem to be handled as they should with varying numbers of errors and warnings.

The only thing I see is that you are running Windows 2003 and I have Windows XP. I didn't check the add-on for inter opt but would assume that it is so buried in FF that it shouldn't matter.

[MikeGale]

I'm pretty sure it's machine specific.

The addon used to work as expected on this machine so something has changed.

I wondered about attaching a debugger to the addon but saw no obvious way to do it. (I was using the VS 2008 debugger. I checked the addon and found a C++ DLL and a Javascript file ...) Without more information though I'm abandoning that idea.