Sometimes pages do not load into exe file

In my project (build with chromium) sometimes pages dont want to load. I click link inside exe file and sometimes load only background of page or all page or nothing happened. Why?

A possible bug in the CEF v1 we use in ExeOutput 1.7. Do you use AJAX calls?
ExeOutput 2 will ship with CEF v3 so it is more recent and stable.

A possible solution…

Quite some time ago I was having a similar issue with exe’s - as I recall there were no script error messages, the pages would just be blank, just plain white, possibly with a http error of some sort(but I can’t remember exactly). It was totally random and I could find no reason for it, I posted a very detailed thread on the old forum about it but it’s no longer here.

The one thing that was consistent about the issue was the fact that it would only ever happen the FIRST time you opened a new page that had not been accessed before in the project, any subsequent access of the same page and it would always load up fine.

I was pulling my hair out for ages, and eventually gave up. I continued building my app that was working fine in the my IDE in the hope that eventually there would be an update to Exeoutput fixing the issue… - still waiting on that! :wink: Regardless, several months later I did experiment with compiling the exe again and eventually managed to fix the issue - although exactly why the fix worked I’m not so sure.

This was my solution:
I had quite a lot of external javascript files being called at the top of the page, probably around 6, all I did was grab the scripts and put them all on the actual page and I’ve not had any white screens since. It’s a pain in the ass having so much js code at the top of every page that requires any kind of javascript - including the entire jquery library etc… but it did work. As soon as I attempted to put the js back into an external file, the random white screens would begin again (probably around 30% of the time when first opening a new page in the app) - the more extenal js files, the higher the chance of the random white screen.

So, with that in mind, take a look at your code and if you have any external js being called, then bring it onto the actual page and see if that helps rectify the problem - let me know how you get on!

NOTE: This problem was occuring with the Trident engine, although whether that’s where the problem lies I’m not so sure, I sense maybe it’s something to do with the way exeoutput unpacks or caches external js? - I’m really not too sure - but if this helps anyone, or might help the dev rectify the issue in V2, then I figured it’d be worth letting you guys know.

  • can I just ask the dev… Do you have any idea what could have been causing the issue and why this workaround worked - could it have been a Trident issue or something to do with Exeoutput?

If you disable multi-threading in the “HTML Engine” page, does it help?

Where is this option?

Back when I had the white screen problem disabling multithreading was never an option as it broke other parts of my app - I was using flush at the time. I’m now using Ajax, but even so, if I disable multithreading, as I recall it broke Ajax too - so it’s a tricky situation, mutithreading has to be switched on. The app also has to be compiled in IE7 compatibility mode too.

In our recent tests with ExeOutput 2 and webkit, AJAX is now working properly. I hope Trident will be OK too since we fixed a minor problem with xmlhttprequest calls.

Ahh, okay, so that might explain the Ajax problem… fingers crossed.

It would probably be a wise move for me to recode the UI to work in Webkit at some point if Ajax is now working, although the changes required to get the UI functioning and looking the same in Webkit are certainly quite daunting, especially bearing in mind I’m currently using compatibility mode with a whole bunch of other CSS tricks that only work in Trident. Having said that, I’m only too aware to future proof it could certainly be a wise move… decisions decisions…