Edge Browser Extension: How to avoid errors and timeouts on some websites

Help and Support
1

I reported this as a bug because that was the closest tag I could find, but I don’t know if it is. It could be that there is a way to make it work that I am not familiar with.

I have been using the Distill Edge browser extension for several years and it works beautifully on most websites. But there are a few sites on which I have never been able to successfully use it.

Here is the url of a page that I have not been able to get it to work on. I doesn’t seem to work anywhere on this CVS website. Try, for example, selecting the price displayed on this page to monitor. For me, with the default Distill settings, it times out and does not return the data.

Well Market Blue Corn Tortilla Chips, 8 oz - CVS Pharmacy

I tried changing various settings in Distill for this site, but nothing seems to work.

Is there some way I can get Distill to work on this site? Or is the architecture of the site something Distill cannot monitor?

Thank you for any assistance and for this fantastic app!

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@desk.today Thanks for reporting this and for the detailed explanation.

Is the monitor running into any specific error? Could you please check the Check Logs and let us know what error is being shown (or share a screenshot of it)?
You can view the check logs here:
https://distill.io/docs/web-monitor/how-to-view-log-of-checks/#what-is-check-log

Also, some websites require the browser tab to remain active in order for the page to fully load and render correctly. You can verify this behavior by:

  • clicking on the tab while the check is running

  • and seeing whether the monitor succeeds only when the tab is active

If it works only while the tab is active, then the page likely requires an active rendering context for monitoring. In such cases, you can try either of the following approaches:

  1. Use Distill’s Desktop App for Local Monitoring
    You can go to the link below and download the Desktop App and use it for monitoring instead of the Distill extension:
    https://distill.io/apps/web-monitor/

  2. Use Cloud Monitoring
    You can configure the monitor to run on Distill’s cloud servers instead of the browser extension, which may work better for some sites depending on how the page loads.

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3

Thank you for your excellent reply.

Also, some websites require the browser tab to remain active in order for the page to fully load and render correctly. You can verify this behavior by:

  • clicking on the tab while the check is running

  • and seeing whether the monitor succeeds only when the tab is active

If it works only while the tab is active, then the page likely requires an active rendering context for monitoring. In such cases, you can try either of the following approaches: …

This was the issue. When I clicked the tabs while running monitors on this site they worked.

Thank you very much for identifying the issue and for the suggested solutions. Really appreciate your quality work and help!

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