Forum OpenACS Q&A: Offline files synchronization of OpenACS pages in IE

1: Offline files synchronization of OpenACS pages in IE

Posted by Matt Morgan on 07/01/02 10:51 PM

We use the ACS calendar, and now we've set up a simple address book
application as well. It would be great to have these available on my
laptop, or even (karma allowing) my Windows CE PDA, when I'm
disconnected from the network.

You'd think that offline files synchronization in IE 5/6 (I'm on 6
something) could handle this, but on a first pass, I can't get it to
work. IE can't seem to login to ACS. If I synchronize, it looks
like it's working. It even takes a good long while and I had to
increase my cache size when it ran out of space for storage. But
then if I disconnect and try to work offline, all I get is the ACS
login page. If I try to login for the heck of it, I get the "this
page is not available offline" message, of course, and I get the same
message if I try to go directly to any page that should have synched.

I have tried this both with and without typing my ACS login and
password into the place where IE synchronization lets you do so, for
pages at which you need a login.

Interestingly enough, after I synch, when I go to another ACS page or
refresh the one I'm on, ACS asks me to login again, as if my cookie
is lost or the cookie's key is not coming up with the right password
anymore.

Anybody tried this, or have more info? To be honest, I don't have
much clue how IE synchronization is supposed to work. I will try it
with other sites at which that require login to see what happens, and
maybe at a few that don't, just to make sure it works.

Thanks,
Matt

2: Response to Offline files synchronization of OpenACS pages in IE (response to 1)

Posted by John Sequeira on 07/02/02 06:04 AM

I've gotten something like this to work in ACS a couple years back using ActiveSync, but I don't remember if there was any login magic that needed to happen.

Are you creating Channel Definition (.cdf) files? Or are you somehow just pointing to the login URL and spidering the site?

If you're going the CDF route (which worked for me), can you create a CDF file that references non-permissioned resources and sync that down to the PDA? In other words, can you get a simple web page or even an image that doesn't require permission to sync to your PDA?

It'd be good to figure out whether it's a permission or a sync config issue.

3: Response to Offline files synchronization of OpenACS pages in IE (response to 1)

Posted by Matt Morgan on 07/03/02 05:13 PM

Thanks, I actually hadn't heard of CDF, IE 6 doesn't really mention it in the course of normal setup.

I tried syncing some other sites (slashdot, nytimes) and I noticed, although they appear to sync, I get errors saying some pages were not downloaded because of robots.txt warnings. So looked it up, and yes, IE "crawling" heeds robots.txt and nofollow meta tags.

In any case, I can't even sync slashdot (no login explicitly required) or nytimes (cookie required) so either my syncing is set up wrong, or I'm just trying to synch pages that all ask robots not to download them.

Thanks!