Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: web browser

  • Web browsing history

    The history of what I have looked at in my web browser should be a feature I like. I know I read something this weekend about work ever expanding to fill the time. Even as efficiencies make things easier, there are places where waste balloons to make people work more than they really need. I…

  • Just Get Rid of Java

    Apparently there are security flaws in the current version of Java allowing the installation of malicious software through web browsers unknown to the user. The known attacks using this flaw work on Windows, OSX, and Linux. According to Reuters: Java was responsible for 50 percent of all cyber attacks last year in which hackers broke…

  • Textarea Backup

    I am going through my software installed on my work computer in order to transfer to a new one. This came to my attention as something potentially relevant to others. A common problem we hear doing web-based learning management system is the web browser crashed before the user could submit a form. The complaints we…

  • Smaller Java Cache

    One of our campus Blackboard Learning System Vista Enterprise administrators reported to have reduced the number of Java cache related issues (failed sessions) by changing the Disk Space Allotment from the 1,000 MB default down to 100 MB. This is found in the Java Control Panel > General tab > Temporary Internet Files: Settings. I…

  • IE and IQ

    A friend posted the Internet Explorer users ‘have below-average IQ’ story on Google+. On the one hand, I love the idea of bashing IE users as incapable computer users who ought to get off the Internet. But then my Psychology background screams at this study as generally worthless. The lack of a statistical analysis ought to…

  • Report Just Usernames

    Occasionally I’ll want to see the usernames who use something like a user-agent property or were doing something during a range of time. Rather than report all the log lines and pick them out of the data, I use this which Blackboard (or maybe BEA added). Note  we’ve added user-agents to the webserver.log. The double…

  • Useful User Agents

    Rather than depend on end users to accurately report the browser used, I look for the user-agent in the web server logs. (Yes, I know it can be spoofed. Power users would be trying different things to resolve their own issues not coming to us.) Followers of this blog may recall I changed the Weblogic…

  • Better CE/Vista Web Server Log

    Some support tickets are more easily solved by knowing both user behavior and environment. An often helpful piece of information is what web browser they used. To add this, shut down the cluster, edit /VISTA_HOME/config/config.xml to include the cs(User-Agent), and start the cluster. This line will need to appear for every node. At startup, the…