I am using the Firefox Distill extension on my desktop. For several weeks I have been able to receive notifications of changes to a sign-in protected webpage, but all of a sudden, without changing anything at my end, Distill is no longer able to get past the sign-in page (ie it is now monitoring the sign-in webpage itself instead of the webpage that pops up AFTER sign-in). I have made sure that the webpage address points to the actual webpage and that I am signed in (ie when I click on the Monitor name it takes me directly to the actual and signed-in webpage, and NOT the sign-in webpage).
I have spoken to the website manager and he confirmed that there had been no changes to the sign-in process at their end.
What could be the reason for Distill to link directly to the signed-in webpage when I click on the Monitor name, but not when it attempts to connect automatically?
when using the browser extension, distill opens the url in the browser to check it for changes. what do you see in that tab? you can click to activate and view the tab cotnent when it is being checked for changes.
Hi Ajit, thank you very much for your reply, much appreciated!
I have now uninstalled the Firefox extension and replaced it with the Desktop app, but this is not working either.
FIREFOX EXTENSION
The Firefox extension worked extremely well for about three weeks, until things all of a sudden deteriorated. First I spotted that the ‘Device’ setting occasionally reset itself to ‘Cloud - Distill Servers’, preventing the extension from working; it started working again each time I manually changed the setting back to ‘Mozilla Firefox’. Then, even after changing the setting back to ‘Mozilla Firefox’ in ‘Edit Options’, the extension still displayed ‘Cloud - Distill Servers’ in Watchlist view. Eventually I was not able to change the setting back to ‘Mozilla Firefox’ at all, not even in ;Edit Options’. Eventually I stopped receiving notifications altogether (I had email, sound, popup and push all enabled), and noticed that the tab you mentioned had stopped showing.
Another issue that gradually developed was that sometimes I was unable to add ‘Conditions’ under ‘Edit Options’ (and even when I had successfully added and SAVED them, they often had disappeared when I checked later, ie they had evidently NOT been saved SUCCESSFULLY). I was forced to use ‘Global Conditions’ instead.
I uninstalled and re-installed the extension several times, but I was never able to make it work as it did in the early days. I wonder whether this was because some of the settings are permanently stored in the registry, and removing those before re-installation would have made a difference?
DESKTOP APP
After uninstalling the Firefox extension I tried my luck with the desktop app, but I am having the same problem with it as with the extension. The ‘Device’ setting is more stable, but I have the same problems with ‘Conditions’ and I am currently forced to use ‘Global Conditions’. According to the ‘Check Log’, the app checks the webpage regularly, at intervals selected under ‘Schedule Check’, but I am not receivng any notifications at all, even when I should have. I checked the webpage manually for changes as per some of my ‘Conditions’, and there have been manyy, but none of them has been picked up by the app although I have email, sound, popup and push all enabled,
Could it be that removing the registry entries before re-installing the app might make a difference?
I have just discovered, that when in the Desktop app I click on the space next to the Monitor name, I get the following error message:
“Website Login Oops! Page not found. Sorry, the page you are looking for does not exist. Back to Home”.
Below this is the number 404 (which I believe is an error code for ‘Page not found’)
This is rather strange, because if I click on the monitor name itself it takes me straight to the webpage in question (to which I am permanently signed in)—so why can’t Distill not acess the same webpage for monitoring purposes?
The other strange thing is that for 3 weeks Distill was perfectly capable of accessing the (signed into) webpage for monitoring purposes, until now.
Is there a workaround for the ‘Page not found’ problem, either in the Desktop app, or the Firefox extension, or both?
the firefox extension hasn’t changed in a long time. it is likely to be a problem either with how the website works or how the monitor has been configured. lets look at them with one problem at a time.
can you share a screenshot or a screenrecording to show what the page not found error looks like?
1x screenshot attached & 3x screen recordings hosted on Streamable as I cannot upload them here (accessible for only 2 days as I only have a free Streamable account; however, I can email the screen recordings to you if need be)
screenshot1|690x458
screenrecording1
screenrecording2
screenrecording3
thanks this helps understand the problem better.
you should check the url of the monitor that displays the page not found message. two things to check:
- does opening that url in the browser render the expected content?
- is javascript enabled or disabled in the monitor’s source settings? some pages don’t work with js disabled.
A minor miracle just happened: without me making any changes to my computer setup or the Mozilla Firefox extension, the extension suddenly started working again, ie was able to access the SIGNED-IN webpage. I spoke to the website manager, but he insists that they did not make any changes to the website, apart from basic routine maintenance updates.
However, the webpage seems to have grown somewhat and now takes even longer to download than it used to; this I suspect is the reason why the extension is not able to read the page in its entirety (for which I have some evidence).
I already have set the ‘delay’ to the maximum (20 seconds); I think I have javascript enabled but I am not sure how to verify this (is this in the config settings? if so, see below).
What else can I do to make the process more reliable? My requirements are very basic: I simply want to be alerted when one or more of 3 or 4 search terms appear ANYWHERE on the webpage, that’s all!
I noticed that the extension seems to be very efficient downloading the plain text (as opposed to the complete visual version) of the webpage, which is all that is needed to check whether any of the search terms are present. Which of the two—the text or visual version—does the extension check for the presence of the search terms?
Also, the webpage does not even have to be downloaded in its entirety, as all the information I require can be found in the dropdown menu at the top right of the webpage.
I have uploaded a couple more screen recordings to illustrate what I mean.
screenrec4 shows what happens when the extension opens a new tab and starts downloading the webpage: despite of ‘delay’ set to 20 seconds, when I tried to scroll down the webpage, it fairly quickly ‘froze’, as it was still in the process of downloading.
screenrec5 shows how large the webpage really is when fully downloaded—I estimate it has about 300 branches of about 20 businesses listed, each with a map and other graphics, ‘View Details’ link etc. Paradoxically, all the data I need access to is in the ‘All Businesses’ dropdown menu which contains the names of approx 20 businesses and is constantly updated (see screenrec5 @ 1:05).
Would it not likely be faster, more efficient and more reliable if I set up a monitor, based on the ‘All Businesses’ dropdown menu as its only ‘selected element’? This would obviously only work if the selection of a dropdown menu as an ‘element’ automatically includes THE CONTENT of the dropdown menu—does it?
screenshot2 shows a typical example of the dropdown menu (the screen recorder did not capture the open dropdown menu). As I said, I am NOT monitoring information related to individual branches of the businesses, only the names of businesses that have one or more branches listed.
CONFIG SETTINGS
{
“selections”: [
{
“frames”: [
{
“index”: 0,
“excludes”: ,
“includes”: [
{
“expr”: “body”,
“type”: “css”,
“fields”: [
{
“name”: “text”,
“type”: “builtin”
}
]
}
]
}
],
“dynamic”: true,
“delay”: 20
}
],
“ignoreEmptyText”: true,
“includeStyle”: true,
“dataAttr”: “text”,
“regexp”: {
“expr”: “”,
“flags”: “gim”
}
}