Yesterday’s major Techinline release 2.0 contained a number of useful features and enhancements, but as it turns out was also accompanied by some negative technical “side-effects” that were experienced by users on both the Expert and Client ends.
Throughout the day (November 7th), we received reports of the following behavior being encountered by our valued users:
Expert: A “greyed out” Client ID field. As a result, the Client ID number could not be entered.
Expert: Some of the buttons on Techinline’s user interface were not displayed. As a result, the Expert was unable to request a remote operation after launching the Tecinline session. Here is a screenshot example of such “behavior”:
- Image of Broken Expert Account Interface
Expert: Other defective appearance of Techinline’s interface in a web-browser
Client: The “Accept” button did not appear to accept the remote session
Our development and support staff worked hard on investigating these unexpected issues, and the root of the problem and its fix were eventually found on the same day.
We found that the latest versions of major web-browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome) cached Techinline’s old Java Script and CSS (Cascade Style Sheets) resources and did not load the modified resources from our server after Techinline’s update, even though these resources were new (Last Modification Date) and differed from those already found in the browser’s cache. This resulted in an incorrect appearance of Techinline’s updated user interface and the problems listed above.
At the same time, Techinline’s stand-alone applications (http://e.fixme.it and http://c.fixme.it) and earlier browser versions worked properly.
After figuring out the cause of the described problem, we were able to fix this issue by renaming the new Java Script and CSS files. We deeply regret this error and the inconvenience caused for our users. To avoid any chance of this problem occurring again in the future, we will now perform a full renaming of Java Script and CSS files for each future Techinline update.
Although this particular issue has been resolved, we ask all users to contact us immediately if they uncover any other problems with using the Techinline service. We make an effort to improve Techinline’s performance and expand its feature-set, which requires periodic updates of our application. Unfortunately, such new functionality may also come with some unexpected temporary negative side-effects such as those encountered yesterday.
We thank all Techinline users who took the time to report these issues yesterday, and appreciate their understanding. We also urge you to contact us in the future with any questions, concerns, or feedback that you may have at any point.
Register now for a fully featured 15-day free trial of Techinline