I am using asp.net and I need to display a prompt to the user if they have made changes to the web page, and they accidentally close down the browser.
The page could be anything from "Edit Profile" to a "Submit a Claim" etc.
How can I can display the messagebox, ensuring that it is displayed only if changes have been made (as opposed to, the user making changes, then undo-ing the changes, and shutting down the browser)
What I have done in the past is use some client side scripting which does this check during the onbeforeunload event....
var showPrompt=true;
var isDirty=false;
var hidePopup=false;
function onBeforeUnload() {
if (showPrompt) {
if (isDirty) {
if (hidePopup || confirm("Click ok to save your changes or click cancel to discard your changes.")) {
doSave();
}
}
}
showPrompt = true;
hidePopup = false;
}
ShowPrompt can be set to false when your clicking on an anchor tag which won't navigate you away from the page. For example <a onclick='showPrompt=false' href='javascript:doX()'/>
isDirty can be used to track when you need to save something. You could for example do something like $("input").onchange(function(){isDirty=true;}); To track undo's you might want to replace isDirty with a function which checks the current state from the last saved state.
HidePopup lets us force a save without confirming to the user.
That's very difficult to even touch without understanding what's on the page. If it's a few controls you capture value at page load and store them so you can later compare. If it's a complex page you'd need to do an exact comparison to the entire viewstate.
Typically you'd handle this type of situation by setting a boolean to TRUE the first time any change is made and disregard the user changing it back. If you're just trying to avoid accidential non-save of data the user should be smart enough to know they've "undone" their changes.
You can do this with javascript. See this question and either of the first two answers.
Related
How can I achieve this using Google Tag Manager?
I want Tag to fire if user made a seeuence of actions. For instance: visits homepage > visits certain category page > clicks on a button that expands additional content > having that content on screen visible at least 90% for 30sec or more > clicking on a button
... exactly in that order.
I would recommend you to use sessionStorage to achieve this. By passing a value to the sessionStorage for each step in the funnel you want to track you can then trigger an event once the user reached the final step.
This solution will require some javascript skills. Here is code snippet to illustrate what I mean.
var url = 'https://www.startpage.com/second';
var start_page = 'https://www.startpage.com';
var second_page = 'https://www.startpage.com/second';
var third_page = 'https://www.startpage.com/second';
if(url = start_page){
sessionStorage.setItem('funnel', 'step 1');
}
if(sessionStorage.funnel){
var previous_step = sessionStorage.funnel;
if(url === second_page && previous_step === start_page){
sessionStorage.funnel = second_page;
}else if(url === third_page && previous_step === third_page){
alert('Send event');
}
}
First of all, you need to enhance Google Tag Manager (GTM) default behavior, buy making some information persistent. By default, GTM tracks information for the current page, so you need to keep track of users making progress in this funnel across several pages. You will find some good advice and examples in this Simo Ahava article.
Second, you need to create all the relevant triggers and tags, that catch these user actions, and update current user's progress in this persistent variable, when they proceed to the next stage. You also need to consider, if there are any actions, which reset the progress, or you allow the user to take other actions as well in the meantime.
The triggers are the following:
Page view for your main page
Page view for your specified category page(s)
Click trigger on the specified element to expand your content
A visibility trigger with proper settings (reference to element, 90% visibility, 30 seconds time on screen)
Finally, a click on your specified element
You should check the progress, and update it when the proper step is taken, compared to the current state. (E.g. complete step three only when user is already on step 2.)
Obviously, you'll need to write the necessary scripts within several Custom HTML tags, but you can probably generalize the behavior with some helper functions for checking the progress, and storing any updates.
So I would like to be able to have a print button for entries in our database so users can print an entry via a print friendly "form".
My thought was to create a separate page, add labels and have those labels pull the relevant information.
I know I can add the open widget information via this code:
app.datasources.ModelName.selectKey(widget.datasource.item._key);
app.showPage(app.pages.TestPrint);
But I'm running into a few problems:
I can't get the page to open in a new window. Is this possible?
window.open(app.pages.TestPrint);
Just gives me a blank page. Does the browser lose the widget source once the new window opens?
I can't get the print option (either onClick or onDataLoad) to print JUST the image (or widget). I run
window.print();
And it includes headers + scroll bars. Do I need to be running a client side script instead?
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
To get exactly what you'd want you'd have to do a lot of work.
Here is my suggested, simpler answer:
Don't open up a new tab. If you use showPage like you mention, and provide a "back" button on the page to go back to where you were, you'll get pretty much everything you need. If you don't want the back to show up when you print, then you can setVisibility(false) on the button before you print, then print, then setVisibility(true).
I'll give a quick summary of how you could do this with a new tab, but it's pretty involved so I can't go into details without trying it myself. The basic idea, is you want to open the page with a full URL, just like a user was navigating to it.
You can use #TestPrint to indicate which page you want to load. You also need the URL of your application, which as far as I can remember is only available in a server-side script using the Apps Script method: ScriptApp.getService().getUrl(). On top of this, you'll probably need to pass in the key so that your page knows what data to load.
So given this, you need to assemble a url by calling a server script, then appending the key property to it. In the end you want a url something like:
https://www.script.google.com/yourappaddress#TestPage?key=keyOfYourModel.
Then on TestPage you need to read the key, and load data for that key. (You can read the key using google.script.url).
Alternatively, I think there are some tricks you can play by opening a blank window and then writing directly to its DOM, but I've never tried that, and since Apps Script runs inside an iframe I'm not sure if it's possible. If I get a chance I'll play with it and update this answer, but for your own reference you could look here: create html page and print to new tab in javascript
I'm imagining something like that, except that your page an write it's html content. Something like:
var winPrint = window.open('', '_blank', 'left=0,top=0,width=800,height=600,toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,status=0');
winPrint.document.write(app.pages.TestPage.getElement().innerHTML);
winPrint.document.close();
winPrint.focus();
winPrint.print();
winPrint.close();
Hope one of those three options helps :)
So here is what I ended up doing. It isn't elegant, but it works.
I added a Print Button to a Page Fragment that pops up when a user edits a database entry.
Database Edit Button code:
app.datasources.ModelName.selectKey(widget.datasource.item._key);
app.showDialog(app.pageFragments.FragmentName);
That Print Button goes to a different (full) Page and closes the Fragment.
Print Button Code:
app.datasources.ModelName.selectKey(widget.datasource.item._key);
app.showPage(app.pages.ModelName_Print);
app.closeDialog();
I made sure to make the new Print Page was small enough so that Chrome fits it properly into a 8.5 x 11" page (728x975).
I then created a Panel that fills the page and populated the page with Labels
#datasource.item.FieldName
I then put the following into the onDataLoad for the Panel
window.print();
So now when the user presses the Print Button in the Fragment they are taken to this new page and after the data loads they automatically get a print dialog.
The only downside is that after printing the user has to use a back button I added to return to the database page.
1.
As far as I know, you cannot combine window.open with app.pages.*, because
window.open would require url parameter at least, while app.pages.* is essentially an internal routing mechanism provided by App Maker, and it returns page object back, suitable for for switching between pages, or opening dialogs.
2.
You would probably need to style your page first, so like it includes things you would like to have printed out. To do so please use #media print
ex: We have a button on the page and would like to hide it from print page
#media print {
.app-NewPage-Button1 {
display : none;
}
}
Hope it helps.
1. Here is how it is done, in a pop up window, without messing up the current page (client script):
function print(widget, title){
var content=widget.getElement().innerHTML;
var win = window.open('', 'printWindow', 'height=600,width=800');
win.document.write('<head><title>'+title+'/title></head>');
win.document.write('<body>'+content+'</body>');
win.document.close();
win.focus();
win.print();
win.close();
}
and the onclick handler for the button is:
print(widget.root.descendants.PageFragment1, 'test');
In this example, PageFragment1 is a page fragment on the current page, hidden by adding a style with namehidden with definition .hidden{display:none;} (this is different than visible which in App Maker seems to remove the item from the DOM). Works perfectly...
2. You cannot open pages from the app in another tab. In principle something like this would do it:
var w=window.parent.parent;
w.open(w.location.protocol+'//'+w.location.host+w.location.pathname+'#PrintPage', '_blank');
But since the app is running in frame nested two deep from the launching page, and with a different origin, you will not be able to access the url that you need (the above code results in a cross origin frame access error). So you would have to hard code the URL, which changes at deployment, so it gets ugly very fast. Not that you want to anyway, the load time of an app should discourage you from wanting to do that anyway.
I am using the AutoCompleteExtender on a commercial site. My problem is the users are quickly typing in part of a word and immediately pressing "Enter" which causes the AutoComplete control to NOT come back with a list of suggestions. For example, if my database has the phrase "Texas, United States" in it but the users just type "Texas" quickly followed by Enter then the dropdown list does not appear.
What I would like is for the AutoComplete control to ignore the fact the user has pressed Enter and go and fetch the suggested data anyway. (The ultimate would be if it ignored Enter when there was currently no list, but selected an item when there was a list).
I can simulate this exact problem by going to the samples section of this Microsoft ASP.NET site and typing in some characters very quickly followed by 'Enter'.
Please could someone tell me what I need to do?
Thanks, Martin
I've hacked around this problem before with an extra keydown handler on the textbox that is the target of the auto-complete. Replace this._autoCompleteBehavior in the snippet below with a reference to your instance of AutoCompleteBehavior (obtainable via $find() and the BehaviorID). The idea here is to force the auto-complete behavior to think it needs to perform a lookup by calling _onTimerTick(), which executes after the typing delay has expired. By default the typing delay gets cancelled by hitting the enter key, so this just forces the lookup anyway on enter or tab.
Disclaimer: my hack references "private" members of the AjaxControlToolkit code (stuff that starts with underscore is "private"), so it is probably not guaranteed to be future-proof.
_searchTextbox_keydown: function(e)
{
var key = e.keyCode || e.rawEvent.keyCode;
// If the user hits enter or tab before the auto complete popup appears, force the autocomplete lookup at that moment.
if ((key === Sys.UI.Key.enter || key === Sys.UI.Key.tab) && this._autoCompleteBehavior._currentPrefix != this._autoCompleteBehavior._currentCompletionWord())
{
this._autoCompleteBehavior._onTimerTick(this._autoCompleteBehavior._timer, Sys.EventArgs.Empty);
e.preventDefault();
}
}
Hey try jQuery or YUI autocomplete extender. It will be lightning fast.
Scenario is : old site which has lots of JS code already written. If user want to change all the alert messages to new age jazzy Div based alert which are very common using JQuery, YUI, Prototype... etc.
There are mainly tree JS dialogs
1. alert
To changes this its simple we just have to write new function which will show the div popup and show the message, after that override the window.alert
function showDivAlert(strMessage){
//div popup logic and code
}
window.alert = showDivAlert;
2. prompt
This too look easy to write function to accept the string and show the text box for input value. Now as return action is based on the click of "OK" button life is easy here.
function shoDivPromp(strMessage){
//div pop up to show the text box and accept input from the user
}
window.prompt = shoDivPromp;
3. confirm
Now above two were easy to override and modify the default dialogs but there is complication with the confirm.
However default JS confirm dialog stops JS execution and when user click OK or Cancel execution is resumed by determining the return value (true/false). But if we user div popup the execution is not stopped which is problem. We can still implement the confirm but in that case we have to bind methods for OK and CANCEL case which will be attached to OK and CANCEL button. With this function signature will be like.
function newConfirm(msg, fun OkAction(), fun CancelAction)
Now this is problem that this cant help me change the confirm dialog across the site as we did with alert();
Question
I am not sure whether its possible or not to achieve but i think can be using some JS pattern. So let me know if its possible.
Now this is problem that this cant help me change the confirm dialog across the site as we did with alert();
That's correct. It's not possible to reproduce the synchronous nature of the alert/confirm/prompt functions in native JavaScript. There is the non-standard method showModalDialog which can do it using a separate pop-up document, but it's not supported by all browsers and it's generally considered highly undesirable.
So the plug-in-replacement strategy isn't going to work. You are going to have to change every place you called these methods in the rest of the script.
The usual pattern is to do it using inline anonymous functions, to preserve the local variables using a closure, eg. replace:
function buttonclick() {
var id= this.id;
if (confirm('Are you sure you want to frob '+id+'?'))
frob(id);
wipe(id);
}
with:
function buttonclick() {
var id= this.id;
myConfirm('Are you sure you want to frob '+id+'?', function(confirmed) {
if (confirmed)
frob(id);
wipe(id);
});
}
If you need this to be preserved you would need to look at a further nested closure or function.bind to do it. If you have your call to confirm in a loop things get considerably more difficult.
Obviously you also have to ensure that critical global state doesn't change whilst the confirm box is up. Usually this risk is minimised by greying out the rest of the page with an overlay to stop clicks getting through. However if you have timeouts they can still fire.
All 3 methods actually stop js execution, not just the confirm, because they're all modal dialogs. Personally, I would try to keep everything as asynchronous as possible as modal dialogs prevent interaction with the current document.
Your best bet is to use callback functions from the new confirm popup as you suggested yourself.
I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what you want to achieve. It sounds like you want to do something like the following:
Run some javascript code
Display a "confirm" box
Wait until the ok button or cancel button is clicked
Continue code when user clicks ok, return when user clicks cancel.
The reason you want to do this is that overriding the function with something that makes use of callbacks would require rewriting each section of code that uses the confirm function. If you want my advice, I would go ahead and rewrite the code so that it performs asynchronously. There's no way you can delay script execution without locking up the document which includes the OK and Cancel actions of your dialog.
if you changed the roles Alert / Prompt / Confirm. slows the execution pending user interaction to run the following code.
Overriding these functions, the code continues its execution.
To achieve this you have to modify each part of the code and work as if you were with asynchronous functions.
Then you can use any plugin for windows as sexy-alert-box, and overwrite Alert / Prompt / Confirm
The function signature would simply be:
function newConfirm(msg, okAction, cancelAction);
and would be used as:
function newConfirm(msg, okAction, cancelAction){
var ok = doWhateverPromptIsNecessary();
if (ok) {
okAction();
} else {
cancelAction();
}
}
That is, to pass function "pointers" in to a function as arguments, simply pass in the function name without the (). The function signature is the same.
I've posted this here, but thought it might deserve a question on its own.
What I'm trying to do is show a dialog box that asks the user if he/she wants to leave the page if there are unsaved changes. That all works fine. But the problem is described below:
Has anyone come across the problem where Internet Explorer fires the onbeforeunload event twice? While Googling around, I found it has something to do with the fact that for (among others) an ASP.NET linkbutton the HTML code is <a href="javascript: __doPostBack....
Apparently, when IE encouters a link that doesn't have a href="#", it fires the onbeforeunload event. Then, when you confirm the javascript dialog box we're showing, the page will do the 'real' unload to navigate to the other page, and raise the onbeforeunload event a second time.
A solution offered on the internet is to set a boolean variable and check on it before showing the dialog. So the second time, it wouldn't be shown. That's all well, but when the user cancels, the variable will still be set. So the next time the user wants to leave the page, the dialog won't be shown anymore.
Hope this is a little clear, and I hope someone has found a way around this?
In reaction to annakata: Yes, but you want the result of the dialog box to be used by the browser. So you might think using 'return bFlag' would do the trick (or event.returnValue = bFlag), but that gives you a second dialog box.
I've found a way around, thanks to this page. It's quite simple actually:
var onBeforeUnloadFired = false;
Use this global variable here:
if (!onBeforeUnloadFired) {
onBeforeUnloadFired = true;
event.returnValue = "You'll lose changes!";
}
window.setTimeout("ResetOnBeforeUnloadFired()", 1000);
And then implement that function:
function ResetOnBeforeUnloadFired() {
onBeforeUnloadFired = false;
}
So, in effect, use the flag, but reset it if the user clicks cancel. Not entirely what I would like, but haven't found anything better.
I haven't encountered this, but surely you could set the flag variable to be equal to the result of the dialog? If the user cancels the flag will therefore remain false.
var bFlag = window.confirm('Do you want to leave this page?');
IE supports an event on the document object called onstop. This event fires after the onbeforeunload event, but before the onunload event. This isn't exactly pertinent to your two dialogs question, but its still relevant to other people that might stumble on this thread ( as I did ).
The problem I was having, was that I needed to display a loading message upon the onbeforeunload event firing. This is all fine until the page has some sort of confirm dialog on it. The onbeforeunload event fires even if the user cancel's and remains on the page. The easiest thing for me to do was to move my "loading" display logic into a handler for document.onstop. On top of this, you have to check the readyState property of the document object, which is another IE-only field. If its "loading", it means the user is actually leaving the page. If its "complete", it means the user is staying.
If you are fine with just using IE, then you might be interested in the following.
document.onstop = function()
{
try
{
if( document.readyState != "complete" )
{
showLoadingDiv();
}
}
catch( error )
{
handleError( error );
}
}