Confusion over mouseover preview Solved

[desktopboB]

Two computers both running latest Windows 10.
Both are running Treehouse 20160812 with the same profile.
On one machine, when I mouseover the link for an image, a small popup of the image appears with the image information and a thumbnail of the image.
On the other machine, which is running in Virtualbox (if that has any bearing) mousing over the image does not produce the popup.

I've combed through the settings for Tools and can't come up with an answer.

Any thoughts?
(and just when I thought I had figured out all the bells and whistles...LOL!).

boB

[thenbman]

It seems to work on my machine ok. I use Windows10. Maybe a Virtualbox thing, sometimes anything can knock something out of balance.

[desktopboB]

Thanks for the input, thenbman...do you, or anybody else, have any idea of what settings can be used in preferences to turn this function on or off??

Thanks,
boB

[thenbman]

Hi Bob, I don't personally know if there's that feature, but that's not to say it's not there. I've been using the editor for about a year and half and I still don't everything about it.

[chami]

You can turn these hints on/off under "Edit > Preferences > Editor > Misc > Show Kit Hints..."

( should be changed to "hovering the mouse pointer" )

Going back to your original question though, if this editor preference is the same on your PC and in VirtualBox VM, I'd check if the VM is getting graphics acceleration.

[desktopboB]

Chami,
Well, did a bit of digging this morning and came up empty.
Each machine has the same settings.

What is curious, is that the Virtual machine shows the HTML hints on mouseover, but not the thumbnails...hmmmm.

Tried upgrading to the latest Tools release with no joy and also uninstalled and reinstalled the Guest Additions driver, also with no results.

Of course, it would help if I could remember the last time this feature worked, bopping back and forth between computers the way I do, but it seems that the latest VirtualBox build may be the culprit, but I have no way to prove it...as I get older I tend to forget more than I remember....LOL

Any further ideas would be welcomed.

boB

[chami]

I haven't had a chance to try this in VirtualBox specifically but I did check that it works in a VMWare Player VM.

To narrow this down though, maybe try creating a new HTML file in C:\temp\ and then putting a small .jpg file in the same folder. Add an tag for it. Does the hint come up?

[desktopboB]

Chami,
Setting up a test page on the local computer in C:\temp\ works fine.

Same file and image when moved over to the network location where I store all my HTML files also works.

But...(you knew that was coming, didn't you?)
Still can't get the thumbnail to pop up on image files (both jpg and png) when they are stored in a separate directory.

Curiously, tried the test image we originally ran on the local drive, popped the image into a separate folder and it works.

Ah, just checked something else...appears that when the Lightbox2 javascript is running on a page, then the image popup doesn't work. I'm running pages while they are being assembled with the javascript enabled, then pull the code and insert it using SSI when the pages are ready to go up on the web.

Oops, this possibleconflict is only working on Tools running in Virtualbox...just checked the straight Windows 10 computer and it doesn't matter whether Lightbox is running or not.

At least we've sort of narrowed down the problem. Sheesh!

Ideas??

Always amazed...seems like you built Tools or something....LOL!

Thanks,
boB

[chami]

Yay

If the image path is valid relative to the HTML file then the image hint should come up.

If calculating the image path involves running JavaScript or resolving base/root/domains then it won't follow those paths because that's really in the scope of previewing the page.

So it's there for quick previews but anything more may require rendering the page.

[desktopboB]

Chami,
Reading what I wrote yesterday on the fly (always proofread, kiddies), I see that I caused confusion (so, what else is new?).

I mentioned that Lightbox 2 was running....that was not correct...what I should have said is that the code to activate Lightbox 2 was in the HTML code...in other words, the code to activate the Lightbox was in the body of the page and, if we went from the editor window to the preview window, Lightbox would become active.
This is the situation I was attempting to describe, in my own blathering way, when describing the differences in the two computers.

So, to rephrase (and hopefully clarify the issue for you), on the Virtualbox machine, if the code that would activate the Lightbox javascript (in the preview window) is in the body of the page, then the mouseover preview fails to work in the editor window.
If the page uses SSI to insert the Lightbox code in the page (a placeholder, if you will, for when the page is to be seen on the Internet), then the mouseover preview works fine.
On the non-Virtualbox machine, it makes no difference which method is used for the code...the mouseover works just fine.

Where I come up scratching my head is why, in the Editor window, having the Lightbox code in the body of the page would cause the mouseover preview to fail to function, since the editor window is rather inert (that the correct term?). It is just code that really does nothing except exist. It isn't until the code is opened in either a browser or the preview window that the javascript should begin to function? Or, am I just out to lunch (yum!)??

Sorry, I mis-stated my case earlier, your honor, and hope this clears things up.

boB

[chami]

Where I come up scratching my head is why, in the Editor window, having the Lightbox code in the body of the page would cause the mouseover preview to fail to function, since the editor window is rather inert (that the correct term?). It is just code that really does nothing except exist. It isn't until the code is opened in either a browser or the preview window that the javascript should begin to function? Or, am I just out to lunch (yum!)??

You're correct. It's when the mouse pointer is over an item (and in some other cases) that HTML-Kit tries to do a limited-scope parsing.

It's hard for me to pin down the exact variable without a reproducible case. If you have some A/B code I'd be able to check what's going on. It might turn out that surrounding JS code is making it difficult to parse img tag/path in isolation.

Sorry, I mis-stated my case earlier, your honor, and hope this clears things up.

It's all good Computer thingies make inception look simple.

[desktopboB]

Chami,
What is A/B code?

'Fraid I'm ignorant in that regard...LOL!

bob

[chami]

Sorry I type gibberish when I'm in the middle of long coding sessions!

Any code that could help reproduce this. Please don't go out of your way to create a test case if this isn't a critical issue for you. It might just need to be previewed anyway if there's a mixture of JS and HTML.

[desktopboB]

Chami,
Well, I guess we can mark this one solved (or a non-issue), but darned if I can figure out why it is now working nor how I got it working again.

Couple of days ago, I opened the Virtual Machine and Tools after laying off for a couple of days.
Opened a page from the right panel "Recent Files" and got to work.
Tried to put in a link using the pull down link on the HTML tab and it gave me a "file://" at the beginning of the link and I got a pop-up saying that it couldn't find a relative path. "Wha?" says I (or words to that effect...LOL!).
Tried a couple of other links, same thing. Tried another page from the main menu and the same thing (will add that the pop-up preview wasn't working either).
Closed everything, opened Tools again, and opened the first page from "Recent"...same thing.
At this point, thought maybe I had discovered a bug in the way Tools was seeing Recent files.

To test this, re-booted Windows,I went to what I thought was the previous Treehouse Build in my Downloads folder (turns out it was the previous pre-Treehouse release. Re-installed Tools with the earlier release and the problem had relative path problem had disappeared.
Then re-installed Tools with the current release.
TA-DAH! Not only had the relative path problem gone away, but my mouse pointer slid over a picture link and the pop-up is now working as well.
Since then, no problems with either links or pop-ups.

Wish I could give you a clue and I'm interested to see what you have to say about the whole thing.

Do I need to mark this solved, or do you do that.

Thanks,
boB

[chami]

Nice work! This is one of those too many variables things

Please feel free to mark this as solved. I do it by default but I'd like to see people mark their threads.