[R] mozilla and R -- again

[ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk]

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, Marc Schwartz wrote:

> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> >[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Anne York
> >Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 3:52 PM
> >To: Help R
> >Subject: [R] mozilla and R -- again 
> >
> >
> >I noticed last week that when using mozilla (both 1.2 and 1.3) 
> >as  the help browser in R, it exhibits the following behavior: 
> >
> >1. assuming the browser is running go to the help -> "search 
> >engine and key words"
> >
> >2. enter a string, say "plot"
> >
> >3. when the "search results" are displayed, click on 
> >something, say "abline"
> >
> >4. go back to the search results using the browser "Back" button
> >
> >5. click on something else, eg, "arrows"
> >
> >Nothing happens.  I get the same results with mozilla 1.2 and 
> >1.3 running R 1.6.2 in both RH 8.0 and Windows 2000.  
> >
> >Seems like the links just die. I'm wondering if this is this 
> >simply a mozilla issue as browsers work fine with R.  Or 
> >perhaps some of the R gurus might have some idea if mozilla 
> >can be configured differently to work better with R? 
> >
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Anne
> 
> 
> Anne kindly e-mailed me and we had an offline exchange on this prior
> to her post here.  I can also confirm this behavior with R 1.6.2 under
> WinXP using Mozilla 1.3.  
> 
> However, if I use IE 6 SP1, this does not occur. So this would seem to
> be yet another example of a Mozilla related Java engine/applet issue.
> 
> When going back to the search results page using Mozilla, a quick
> visual scan of the HTML code does not show any changes from the
> initial version that worked.  If you move the mouse over the links,
> the mouse changes, however the link URL does not show on the Mozilla
> status line, suggesting that something is at least partially blocking
> the link activation in the browser.

I get similar behaviour in Netscape 7.02. There the link does show.  
However, after going back it is a relative URL not an absolute URL, so the
browser has lost the base URL.  Given this is an auto-generated page, that 
is not too suprising: going back to auto-generated pages often does not 
work (and the URL in the address box was wrong, still that of the previous 
page).

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595