[Bug] MS IE example (COM)

Poor Dennis, nobody else seems to have been brave enough to try what you’re doing :-(.

The only help I can offer is how to debug VM crashes – if that’s what you mean by an image crash. In bin\win\readme.txt, it says to look at this URL:

http://wiki.cs.uiuc.edu/VisualWorks/debugging+at+the+virtual+machine+level

There’s also a VM command-line argument, -o10s, which outputs all method calls to stdout (if you start with the debug vwntconsole.exe), but that’s maybe more useful for crashes at startup. [just added that info to the above URL].

Steve

Hello,

I tried to find a way around the #item method of the frames collection which may return some strange
Dispatch Objects that do not like retrieving their ITypeInfo interface and this way
seem to cause the trouble. For me the following code snippet seems to work:

| browser doc frames frame |

browser := MSIEEventTraceViewer open browserController.

browser navigateTo: 'http://www.digitalglobe.com/archive'.

"wait for page being downloaded here"

doc := browser dispatchDriver getProperty: 'Document'.

frames := doc getMethod: 'frames'.

numFrames := frames getMethod: 'length'.

0 to: numFrames-1 do: [:index |

      frame := doc getMethod: 'frames' with: index.

      [ frame invokeMethod: 'navigate' with: 'http://www.google.de'. ]

ensure: [ frame release]].

frames release.

doc release.

Further I placed a workaround in MSIEEventTraceViewer>>navigateCompleted:to: as I got COM stacktraces
when executing the example which are not useful at this position.

Inside the method, please replace …

            (self describeDispInterface: frameDispatchInterface)

with:

            ([ self describeDispInterface: frameDispatchInterface ]

on: Error

do: [:ex | ex return: 'SomeInterface - error describing interface']).

It does not remove the reason for the error, but it avoids popping up windows with COM stack traces.

I assume, as the callback implementation works for parameters representing entire browser windows,
the problem is caused by parameter which represent only frames.

I am not sure why these “frame” interfaces should disallow retrieving their describing ITypeInfo (I could not find
anything during a short google search session or in the MSDN) but that is what seems to happen.  

However there might be different reasons for the problem, e.g. a wrong assumption somewhere deep

inside COM Connect or a non-standard implementation inside the used COM Server.

Finding the real reason will require some more investigation.

Best regards,
Alexander Augustin

Hi again! :)

Still having 'fun' with Internet Explorer I've met another issue. Consider the following script:

The last line leads to image crash. And I can't even debug it! All method invokations I've tried through something fail.
But

gives a correct result.

I use vw 7.4 nc. Checked it in vw 7.3.1 and got the same problem.

Btw, the similar script in Dolpin works.

Unfortunatly, this can stop me using VisualWorks for the work I'm doing (but I don't want to), so please help!!!
Or send any answer at all, just to let me feel myself not so lonely :)

--
Dennis Schetinin