User reported issue: Unable to load Resistance in a Wire

[oliver-phet]

Reported via phethelp by Danilo Mauro dmauro75@gmail.com on 8/18/2013:

"I can run your new html5 simulations with my iMac except for the last one: "Resistance in a wire". It appears "Loading…" both with Safari and Firefox but then nothing happens."

Debugging info from a working sim (Ohm's Law):

Troubleshooting information Name: Legge di Ohm URL: https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/ohms-law/latest/ohms-law_en.html Version: 1.0.0 Features missing: flexbox, touch User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_8_4) AppleWebKit/536.30.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.5 Safari/536.30.1 Language: it-it Window: 1268x865 Pixel Ratio: 1/1

[jonathanolson]

I'm able to successfully load the sim with the exact same OS version/safari version, and latest firefox. I'm curious whether the user has any addons/extensions/plugins that would be causing this, or any server issues? It's very weird that it is happening across browsers and only for one sim. Maybe it is italian-language specific?

My troubleshooting infos:

Name: Resistance in a Wire URL: http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html Version: 1.0.0 Features missing: flexbox, touch User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_8_4) AppleWebKit/536.30.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.5 Safari/536.30.1 Language: en-us Window: 1302x648 Pixel Ratio: 1/1

Name: Resistance in a Wire URL: http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html Version: 1.0.0 Features missing: flexbox, touch User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:23.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/23.0 Language: en-US Window: 1366x655 Pixel Ratio: 1/1

[samreid]

I also noticed that the name was reported as "Name: Legge di Ohm" and that the language was listed as "it-it". Perhaps there is some problem with i18n (which I do not think is fully tested and ready for deployment yet).

[jonathanolson]

I missed that, it suggests it's being run indirectly through a translating service?

I tried http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fphet.colorado.edu%2Fsims%2Fhtml%2Fresistance-in-a-wire%2Flatest%2Fresistance-in-a-wire_en.html&act=url but it still launched.

[oliver-phet]

Can I ask Danilo how he is translating the sim or if he has any addons/extensions/plugins installed?

[jonathanolson]

Sounds like a good idea. Chrome's in-browser translation only works for a fraction of a second, then the sim goes back to English (probably because we re-set the strings), but the title is translated same as the above bug report.

[oliver-phet]

Danilo's response: "I click on the simulation from Phet web site. The address appearing in the bar is:

http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html

Also with Firefox, Windows 7 and a Sony Vaio computer the same problem with that simulation still remains. Everything else works perfectly. Thank you in any case!"

I also had him try refreshing the page to make sure the loading wasn't being hung up: "the sim does not load, even pressing the reload button."

From the sound of it, Danilo is just trying to access the vanilla (English) version of RiaW, but the sim is not loading.

Next steps?

[ariel-phet]

I recommend in Firefox you have him press "Ctrl+Shift+K" this will bring up the "developer console"...ask him to go to the html5 site, clear the console and then try loading the sim, it may pop up some errors (try doing this yourself so you can give him clear instructions).

When I tried, the sim loaded, but these 3 errors appeared in the console:

[09:04:34.216] Unknown property 'box-sizing'. Declaration dropped. @ http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html [09:04:34.229] Error in parsing value for 'display'. Declaration dropped. @ http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html [09:04:34.229] Error in parsing value for 'left'. Declaration dropped. @ http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html [09:04:34.229] Error in parsing value for 'right'. Declaration dropped. @ http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html

Might give us some hint as to what is going on.

[oliver-phet]

Email to Danilo: Hello Danilo,

Could you please navigate to the main HTML5 page: http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/html Then press "Ctrl+Shift+K". This will bring up the developer console. Then press 'Clear' on the right side. After the console is cleared click "Resistance in a Wire". When the new page is open press "Ctrl+Shift+K" again to bring up the developer console - if there are any errors when loading the sim, they should show up there.

Could you please copy/paste (you can right click in the output and 'Select All') the console output when you attempt to load the sim? (Hopefully, this will help us to diagnose the problem!)

Thanks, Oliver

[oliver-phet]

Email from Danilo: Hello Oliver,

I succeeded in following your procedure with Firefox on my IMac. The following message appeared:

[20:16:32.454] Proprietà sconosciuta 'box-sizing'. Dichiarazione tralasciata. @ http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html [20:16:32.463] Errore durante l'interpretazione di 'display'. Dichiarazione tralasciata. @ http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html [20:16:32.463] Errore durante l'interpretazione di 'left'. Dichiarazione tralasciata. @ http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html [20:16:32.463] Errore durante l'interpretazione di 'right'. Dichiarazione tralasciata. @ http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html

[20:16:32.473] Error: undefined missing ../nls/it/resistance-in-a-wire-strings @ http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/resistance-in-a-wire/latest/resistance-in-a-wire.min.js:105

Then I go to the preferences of Firefox and I changed Contents->Language from [it-it](which here is the default) to [en-us] and I succeeded in loading also the simulation "Resistance in a Wire"!!

Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you very much for your infinite patience!

Regards, Danilo

[pixelzoom]

If I interpret JO's fix correctly... The sim was using the browser locale because no locale was specific in the requirejs config? (resistance-in-a-wire-config.js) Is that correct? What about the Norwegian report that some sim (don't recall which one) was using the browser locale? Is it the same issue?

Also... How are we going to keep track of which bugs have been fixed since the last time we published a release? I still think we should be keeping a changelog (changes.txt) for each sim, and noting (at a minimum) publication dates and fix dates in the log, but that doesn't seem to be happening uniformly.

[jonathanolson]

Yes, it is correct that the i18n plugin will default to the browser's locale if a locale is not specified in the requirejs config. This should be a problem for any non-English browser locale where we had a translation that matches.

changes.txt works for me for sim-specific issues.

[oliver-phet]

Sent email to Danilo letting him know of the fix.

[oliver-phet]

Email from Danilo (9/3): Hello Oliver, unfortunately both on Safari and Firefox I cannot load Resistance in a Wire unless I do not go to Preferences and change Contents->Language form [it-it] to [en-us]. I can load the other five html5 simulations and they all works well! Ohm's Law appears to me already translated into Italian.

Thank you very much. Regards, Danilo

[jonathanolson]

We didn't yet deploy a new version with fixes. I think we have release candidates that will contain the fix.

[pixelzoom]

The fix should be in this release candidate: http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/dev/html/resistance-in-a-wire/1.1.0-rc2/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html

[oliver-phet]

Email to Danilo sent Sep 5, 2013: Hello again Danilo, Sorry about my previous email. I found out that we have fixed the problem, but the fix has not been published to the live version on the PhET website. Can you please test the following link and let me know if it resolves the problem? http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/dev/html/resistance-in-a-wire/1.1.0-rc2/resistance-in-a-wire_en.html

This is a "beta" link that will NOT be permanent, so I wouldn't publish this link to the sim. Once we have published the latest version to the website, I will let you know and you can use the link on the PhET website.

Thanks, Oliver

[oliver-phet]

Email from Danilo (9/): Hello Oliver,

also from your link both Safari and Firefox cannot load the sim unless I change in the Preferences Content->Language from [it-it] to [en-us].

Thank you very much, Danilo