[Axiom-developer] RE: Mathaction edit/preview/save problem

[Bill Page]

William,

On Friday, January 14, 2005 3:03 PM you wrote:
> > 
> > On Thursday, January 13, 2005 4:47 AM you wrote:
> > >
> > > Here's is the edit on DynamicFunctionDomains page. When I
> > > tried preview and save, it said "cannot find server".
> ... 
> I tried again and the same thing happens. Is it because I did 
> NOT sign on MathAction? I once found a link to login, but now
> I could not find it (the login page also let one subscribe).

Perhaps the `login' link has been removed from the FrontPage
but really all that was was a link to what is labelled
"Preferences" in the main menu. Really one does not actually
have log in to MathAction. It is not controlled in that way.
All you are doing is letting the system know who you are. That
is done by clicking 'preferences'. If you have persistent
cookies enabled in your browser, then it will remember your
preferences information (including your name and email address)
the next time you access MathAction.

> If one MUST login before saving any editing (or make other
> contributions to the site), then I think on the top menu lines,
> there should be a login and if possible, the functions are
> dimmed unless someone has logined. Right now, the items are
> dimmed if it has been accessed.

No this isn't necessary. If you haven't set your name using
Preferences then any changes you make will just be identified
by the name Anonymous, but they will still work.

> I use IE, Firefox on a windows machine.

I use both of these with no problem both behind a strick
firewall at work and behind a simplier firewall configuration
here at home.

> I also tried this with safari on a MacOSX machine (Cannot open
> page) or when I tried Sandbox and click on back, safari crashed.
> I don't have a network problem (I can send and receive email).

Sorry but that does sound like some kind of network problem
to me. Email uses entirely different protocols than a browser.

> 
> Perhaps I am just missing something obvious? Could it be 
> because of firewall programs? (My computers are shielded by
> a Netgear router).
> 

I don't use Netgear but I do not think that this could be a
firewall problem.

It does not make any sense to me that you can access pages
on MathAction and even click Edit, but that when you try to
click Preview or Save you suddenly get a "cannot find server"
message. The best explanation that I can think of is that
this might mean that you have some kind of intermittant domain
name server problem. "cannot find server" usually means that it
tried to lookup the name `page.axiom-developer.org' in order
to find its numeric ip address but your domain name server
told your browser that it could not find that particular name.
That is strange because it obviously found the same name when
you first found that page.

How often do you use a web browser on your system? Do you
get this message when accessing any other web site?

Regards,
Bill Page.