Kelly finally solves the mystery of several strange issues reported in the new Testify! module.
As you may know, we released a nifty new module called Testify! recently. It has a lot of cool features - not least among them is a heavier use of Javascript and AJAX to enhance the interface and aid in usability. While the majority of customers have had no problems, a couple have reported difficulty with:
- Activating their software
- The Pop-Up Form not popping up due to a script error
- The tabs on the Settings page not functioning correctly.
At first this baffled me. I've been using Javascript in XMod for years with no problem and I wasn't able to immediately replicate the issue on any of my test beds. However, after some investigation and discussions with other developers (thanks Peter Donker), I found out that there are some problems with DNN's built-in whitespace filtering mechanism. The issue is not specific to Testify!
As you may know, once area where you can achieve greater performance out of your website is by removing all the extra spaces and whitespace that don't get rendered by the browser anyway. Doing so can trim the overall size of the page, reducing the amount of data you send over the wire and, as a result, your site can feel peppier to your end users.
This is all well-and-good, but in its zeal to strip extra whitespace from the rendered page, DNN ends up mangling some Javascript. Interestingly, this does not seem to happen when the script is delivered via included files (i.e.
tags pointing to .js files). What is different with Testify! is that it delivers much of its script via the AXD file, used to inject resources into the page and that is what the whitespace filter appears to be choking on.
At this point, the fix is simple. If you are experiencing any of the above issues in Testify!, turn off whitespace filtering. To do this go to Host Settings. Expand the Advanced Settings section. Expand the Performance Settings section. Finally, un-tick the Use Whitespace Filter box. Save your changes and try again.
As for a more permanent fix, we'll have to wait for the core. I believe they could fix the problem simply by not processing AXD files, but since I haven't analyed the code, I don't know if there would be any consequences for doing so.