Page Tab Not Showing Up on Pages - tabs

I have created a page tab (which I have done before without any trouble) but am now not seeing it on either of our two fan pages. I keep seeing a reference to "add to page" but can't seem to find this option. When I go to the fan page and edit it, click on apps, the new page tab I created is not there.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

They seem to be changing things a lot lately. You should check out the Facebook Page Tab Documentation if you haven't already; Assuming you haven't answered your question in the past 30 days.

Related

Writing a Google Chrome extension for an aspx page

I'd like to know if someone can point me in the correct direction for this. I've been interested in writing a chrome extension to improve my workflow since we use a lot of webapps at my job. For example, my jobs ticketing system is pretty old and requires that we look manually for any changes or updates. It's got email notifications built in, but they are slow and unreliable.
I've never written chrome extensions before so I looked at some tutorials but none of them give me any information about doing this on an aspx page. Since I don't have direct access to the server this runs from, I thought it should be possible to do something from my end such as automatically refreshing the page using the page's refresh button instead of the browsers refresh button, or automatically opening some collapsed menus which default to being collapsed when you refresh the page.
I was hoping someone could help me figure out how to go about doing this because so far my research hasn't given me anything I can directly apply to this issue.

Hyperlinks (to Sharepoint) in MS-Access tables not behaving as expected

Hello StackOverflow community,
I've just started having an issue with hyperlinks stored within an MS-Access table not behaving as expected.
I have a small database which, among other things, records links to documents hosted on a company Sharepoint site. Until a few days ago, all was working fine with both the database and the hyperlinks.
For some reason, within the last few days, whenever I (or any of my users) click on these hyperlinks through an Access form (or me clicking directly from the tables), I am getting strange behavior:
Clicking the link does open a new instance of the default browser, as desired. And that browser does navigate to the company Sharepoint site. But none of the links actually open the specific document that they are intended to point to.
Instead, all links are bringing up a general file/folder menu within the Sharepoint site. It is almost as if these links point to a non-existent file within an existing folder.
The very strange part is, if I "edit" any of the hyperlinks in my database, and simply select and copy the "address" text from within the edit hyperlink window, I will always immediately pull up the correct desired document if just paste the address directly into a new browser window.
I would have thought that this type of cutting/pasting would necessarily be equivalent to simply clicking the link. But that is obviously not the case.
I feel like I can safely rule out the possibility that any changes to the Sharepoint site itself would be causing my issue with simply clicking the links (otherwise cutting/pasting the addresses would not bring up the correct documents), but I have to admit I am simply stumped as to why just clicking the hyperlinks directly used to work, but no longer does.
I don't believe there is any code or other relevant information that might be helpful that I am neglecting to include, but would be eager to provide any clarifications/etc if anyone has any idea as to what might be happening here.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts or suggestions!
~JQN
EDIT: I had deleted this question because the issue described above had simply stopped happening. I was unable to explain why, but was also unable to reproduce the issue again after a certain point within a day or two of making the original post.
Since then, the issue has returned. I've been able determine the following:
As described in my note below, when I am getting this odd link behavior, I do NOT get the standard warning from MS-Access indicating that hyperlinks may be harmful, etc.
Strangely, simply opening up a file dialog/file picker and then navigating through that dialog to any location on the (sync'ed) Sharepoint site seems to make the problem go away. I do not need to actually select or open any location on Sharepoint, simply navigating within the sync'ed folder structure seems to do the trick.
Once this happens, all links behave as intended again (ie. they open the correct linked file directly instead of landing on the root folder page). They MS-Access hyperlink warning returns as well. The file/link behavior will remain in that state for several days. Only after, I'd estimate, a week or more of inactivity since the file dialog was last run will the issue return.
FURTHER EDIT: New update...Enough time has passed so that the issue is recurring again. As suspected, links to pages outside of Sharepoint are not affected, and open as expected without issue. Once again, the standard Microsoft hyperlink warning dialog is not coming up for any links.
Obviously, now that I've found the work-around with the file dialog, it's easy enough for me to fix the issue when it arises. I'm hoping that this rings a bell with somebody, though, and perhaps one of you could point me in the right direction for a more complete fix for my users.
Thanks again for any help with this!
YET ANOTHER EDIT: Ok....based upon all the things I've learned in the last couple of weeks (as captured in this post and the comments below), I was about to delete this question and re-post it as "Why is Sharepoint redirecting my URL requests from MS-Access?" As I tried to search the forum to make sure that that question hasnt already been asked, I stumbled across some info that I think gets at the underlying issue:
It looks like this is related to the (very opaque) way that Office processes URL requests. It apparently doesn't simply open the document at the specified link, it first "pre-tests" (I suppose that's the right word) the URL by sending a "Microsoft Office Protocol Discovery" request first.
Apparently, it is possible for Sharepoint to somehow not like the particulars of that MOPD request, and if that happens, then Sharepoint redirects to the file directory page -- and that directory page ends up being opened in the browser instead of the intended link/document.
Again, this only happens sometimes and not others. When it does happen, I've found a clumsy workaround that will correct the issue for about a week or so. I can't reproduce the issue during that week, I just have to wait for the workaround to expire (I obviously don't fully understand why my clumsy workaround works).
It doesn't seem possible to manipulate the particulars of the MOPD request. If possible, I'd love to be able to dispense with MOPD entirely, since I want all the files I'm linking to via Access to be opened as read-only anyway. Unfortunately, I don't think that that is possible either.
I've found some info on this in another SO thread HERE. I still am not quite at the point where I feel I'm ready to submit an answer to this question, but I have some ideas as to what sorts of things may function as an acceptable workaround.
It would be helpful if anyone had any ideas as to how I might be able to reproduce the issue on demand, rather than simply waiting another week for whatever keys/cookies/settings/etc to expire again. I'd need to implement any possible solutions entirely on the Access side of things if possible, rather than on the Sharepoint/server side. Thanks again for any suggestions!
I'm posting this as an answer now, but will avoid accepting it until I've had a chance to verify that it actually works.
I am inserting some code that will run on DB startup. It will open a (an invisible) form that has an Access WebBrowser control included. I'll have that control navigate to a specific file on the Sharepoint site. I believe that it is actually this action that somehow causes the link problems to resolve for a week of so.
This form will run silently in the background, navigate to the sharepoint file location, and then close. This should hopefully refresh whatever characteristics of the MODP request that are present when the links work properly (and are absent while they aren't working properly).
In essence, I'm hoping this approach will have the effect of resetting my (approximately) one week window of desired link functionality to start anew each time the database is opened. In other words, I'm thinking that this will work, although I still don't fully understand why.
Wish me luck!
;)

Is there any way to permanently alter how a webpage displays on the client-side (without server access)?

Firebug lets you edit individual web pages locally, with live updating so you can see the effects of your changes right away. Unfortunately, these changes are lost after the page is refreshed.
Is there any way to make these changes "sticky" in some way, such that repeated visits to the site would reload your own customized html/css that you edited? I'm thinking perhaps some sort of Firebug feature that I'm missing, or another plugin of some sort...
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about websites I have server side access to. I would simply like to be able to reposition the content of some pages I visit frequently so it fits better on my monitor setup, which I can do in Firebug but I have to do it every time the page loads (I would like to be able to avoid having to do that).
You should make use of the Greasemonkey and / or Stylish addons for Firefox.
These where originally developed to do exactly what you intend to achieve.
Also check out this article on how to get started with Stylish.

Why are page titles on some websites clickable URLs?

Why on sites like Stack Overflow, Techcrunch, Smashing Magazine, etc. are the page titles (i.e. the text at the top of the page) clickable URLs that redirect to the same page that the user is on?
Some examples:
I believe that this does not effect SEO as search engines ignore internal links.
Is it for usability purposes?
It allows you to right-click on it and choose Copy link location (or equivalent) so that you can easily paste it in an email for example. This requires less time than copying it from the location bar, and some people run their browser without a visible location bar to save previous screen space.
More than anything, it provides a link to the default state of the page.
For example, for this very stack overflow page it is a user can get here through any of the following non-default links:
Why are Page Titles on some websites (including Stack Overflow) Clickable URLs?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/904381#foobar
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/904381?sort=date
While the default link is actually:
Why are Page Titles on some websites (including Stack Overflow) Clickable URLs?
If users are unable to get to the default state, they end up bookmarking or emailing the non-default link which propagates to new users and the problem just multiplies.
Clicking on the title link of the post will restore the default state and strip off any query parameters (?sort=date), named anchors (#foobar) and fix the story slug (/why-are-page-titles/...).
I use it to refresh the page (yes, I could press F5 too).
Yes Jakob Nielsen has stated that linking to yourself is a web design mistake (nr 10). And I agree.
More reading info here. (nr 10)
The URL redirects to the beginning of the page, in case you arrived on the page via a specific answer (all answers are also clickable URLs). This way, you get the URL of the question, not of an answer.
Not sure if this is why they did it, but I find it useful to siphon off tabs:
If I look at something briefly and think "I'd like to read this thoroughly in a minute but continue with what I was doing before", I can do this:
I can right click the link, click "open in a new tab" and then click "back" and continue nicely.
It's called a Permalink... The name implies what it is, a permanent link.
It's the same reason that each answer on SO has a link you can copy.
I think it inherits the behavior from CMS where each question is a node, which has 0<= answered question. Now think you go for a search on apache questions.
The result are displayed one after another.
In terms of CMS this is called a teaser. You get a full page with lots of questions where the question's title link to the full article(question + answers)
Its not a must, but you'll find it on most sites which uses a CMS.
As long as it does not harm anyone why would people be against it?
I prefer to have those links available as hitting refresh would reload all elements of the page instead of just following the direct link (to the same page) that uses cached elements.
Makes sense to me, I find it useful! I have a lot of tabs open so I just right click the link and go back.
To me this makes perfect sense, from a SEO view this is also good! It forces it to read the page because it's linked.
UX-wise clickable titles which don't bring the user anywhere may seem unusable though that leads us into the realm of Affordance Theory and whether or not the affordance is perceptible to users.
For example, clickable page titles may provide:
A simple method for bookmarking a page to the desktop from a browser window.
A context menu with additional choices allowing users to share a blog post or article.
A method for updating the location bar so it's pointing at the canonical URL of the page.
For the sites you mentioned, however, it seems more likely the page titles were turned into hyperlinks using absolute URLs so analytics tooling could pick up inbound link clicks – those sending the referer info – resulting in DCMA takedown notices when people copied work and didn't update the URLs.
You'd be surprised what people do when they're being incentivized to produce work contractually.

opening links in the same window or in a new (tab)

It has always been best practice to open links in the same window. Should that still be the rule now that most common browsers use tabs? Personally i prefer closing a tab/window over hitting the backbutton. What are your thoughts?
If you prefer closing a tab/window over hitting the back button, then by all means, click links with your middle mouse button. But please don't force your surfing preferences on others. Tabs don't change this principle in the slightest.
I think consistency is the most important thing to keep in mind. Browsers are beginning to provide ways to open links in multiple tabs regardless of the web site's design decisions, so maintaining similar functionality as other websites is probably the biggest concern.
You really want your site's core features to behave like the other sites your users visit, so they feel comfortable and don't waste time trying to figure out the differences.
That said, there are times when you should open a new window/tab vs. opening a link in the current window/tab. For example, if the two pages (the current one, and the linked page) really need to be viewed simultaneously).
Yes, it should be the same. A new tab is more or less a new window, it just happens to be held in the same parent container as the original tab.
Are we discussing links that leave your site? Our company benefits provider has a web site for administering our flexible spending acct. It opens 3 separate windows from the time I login until I reach the page to submit a claim. I have never been a fan of opening a new tab/window when navigating within a site.
Thoughts?
Some browsers actually open a new window when asked to open a new window (gasp), even if they support tabs. I usually have two or three different browser windows open, each with a number of tabs, grouped by task. If some site unexpectedly forces a new window on me, I now have to re-integrate it as a tab into one of my open windows if I want to keep my task grouping. This is a major annoyance.
If I want to open something in a new tab, I can do so myself, thank you very much. Don't try to think for the user. The only time I can accept/expect a new window is when the original site needs to stay open, for example because I'm entering text into a form but need to open a "more info" window (see StackOverflow Answer Help button).
I'm going to wear out my scroll wheel button by the amount of tabs I open. There's a great Firefox extension that allows you to close the current tab with a single keypress, and I've assigned to it, so it's very easy to close tabs quickly.
I think it is still in the realm of personal preference, but depending on what I am browsing I am finding more and more that I open links in new tabs. I do this a lot when I a reading a page with a lot of related links but I want to finish reading the main page first. That way when I am done I can go look at all those links rather than trying to go back using the back button.