This page aims to help you diagnose (and hopefully fix) the most common problems with the Space application, as well as supporting a detailed diagnosis in cooperation with our technical staff. Since it can get a bit technical at times, the main intended audience is technically proficient users (e.g. IT staff). The core information should however be accessible to anyone.

Known problems

First we have a look at the most common symptoms and their cause. To avoid unnecessary redundancy, the solutions given will usually refer to individual topics in the "Diagnostics Tools" section below.

Problem:

1. P: The "Space Loading" screen stops at "module Report Handler".

S: The application encountered an error initializing the map applet. See "The dynamic map applet fails to initialize".

2. P: Internet explorer crashes on or after the "module Report Handler" step.

S: Related to the previous problem and most likely caused by a bug in the installed Java runtime. See "The dynamic map applet fails to initialize".

3. P: The dynamic map applet fails to initialize.

S: Our most frequent problem, and unfortunately among the most difficult to diagnose and solve. Possible causes can be a bad Java runtime, deactivated support for Java applets in the browser and problems with the applet's cryptographic certificate.
This can be best disagnosed via the technology test page, Firefox with Firebug and the Java console.  

4. P: The "Space Loading" screen doesn't change at all -- not even the progress bar is visible.

S: Javascript support is disabled in the browser. The technology test page should confirm this.

5. P: The "Space Loading" screen stops at "module Initialize Layers".

S: Support for XMLHTTPRequest is disabled in your browser. The technology test page should confirm this.

6. P: The dynamic map is only shown sometimes / is slow / sometimes disappears again.

S: This can happen especially during late afternoon (European time) and is mostly caused by lots of after-work traffic to our map provider. Unfortunately there is little we can do about it. Another possible cause for this are slowdowns in the running instance of the Java runtime (can happen especially after many page reloads etc), which can usually be fixed by restarting the browser.

Diagnostics Tools

The Technology Test Page

The first and easiest step in diagnosing problems with the Space application, the test page at https://www.space-risk.com/space/testpage/ your browser environment, checks it against our list of core requirements and gives you immediate feedback if anything is wrong.
A screenshot of that page is also very helpful to our technical staff when investigating more difficult problems.
Firefox with "Firebug".

The "Firebug" plugin for the Firefox browser is an excellent diagnostics tool for all kinds of web applications, since it can display a detailed log of all frontend / backend communication, precise Javascript error messages (both via the "Console" view) as well as a detailed log of all page content loaded from the server (via the "Net" view).

This may very well provide sufficient help to technically proficient users to find the root cause of a problem, and is especially useful when diagnosing problems in cooperation with our technical staff.

Unfortunately we are not aware of any free tool with similar functionality for Internet Explorer. The closest candidate is Microsoft's Script Debugger, but its output is usually less than helpful.

The Java Console

Accessible via the Java symbol in the taskbar (typically visible once a java applet is loaded in the browser, see the first screenshot to the right), the Java console can offer lots of information regarding the Java applet -- and even solve some problems.

In its initial state, the console shows a quick help text listing several keys it reacts to. The second screenshot to the right highlights the most useful ones:

• "c": Clear Console. Removes all output and redisplays the help text.
• "5": Set trace level to maximum. This causes as much information as possible to be included in the output.

For an optimal diagnostics trace, type "x5c" in the console and (re-)load the space application in your browser.

Other possible Causes of Problems

Popup Blockers

One customer reported that a third party popup blocker product interferred with the Space web application despite being disabled. The problem was tracked down via the Firebug browser plugin without requiring further input from our side.

Incompatible Java Versions

Java before version 1.5.0_14 has a known bug that may prevent the application from working. We have also had a report of problems with Java 1.6.0_05 in combination with Internet Explorer 7.