Known Bugs and Workarounds

Index

Shop loses order when I try to purchase
Starting up WebFunds when you're off-line
Pending payments cancelled on Startup
Purchases that I can't afford
Where did my purchasing approval window go?
Incompatible Currencies or Issuers

Back to the WebFunds page or the FAQ index or the Ricardo page.

Shop loses order when I try to purchase

Some shops use cookies to trace what you have ordered. A cookie is a magic line of information that is stored on your computer. When you select an item to purchase, the shop might send a cookie to your machine for storage, in anticipation of a decision to order. In the world of HTML, the shop finds it easier to do that as it is a facility explicitly provided to allow you to pay for multiple items in one go.

Now, many people think it undesirable that the net can stick data onto their machines, as there are many security and privacy implications. For this reason, browsers will include facilities to reject cookies or ask the user for permission.

So, if you reject a cookie by cancelling it, or you have cookies automatically rejected without you knowing, then the items that you have selected will not be recorded. As the shop does not get told that a cookie has been eaten, at first it will say that the item is on the order form, and later it will claim that no items are selected.

In order for these shops to work, you must have cookies enabled on your browser and you must accept the cookies that they send.

Starting up WebFunds when you're off-line

Early versions (pre V1.00) insisted on being on-line to function correctly.

This is rectified in V1.00. With this release, WebFunds will only go online when it needs something identified by the user. In order to push it on-line, for example to check for receipts, there is a File/Connect option.

Pending payments cancelled on Startup

When older versions of WebFunds (up to V.023, before V1.00) started up, they would cancel all outstanding payments, including ones which were manually exported. This was a problem for payments that had been mailed to someone.

Purchases that I can't afford

What happens if I spend my cash after sending a SOX payment to someone?

Any second payment will bounce. The value that is in each khid can only be used once. We don't consider this to be a bug, though. YMMV :))

Where did my purchasing approval window go?

The Order dialog with the Sign button is lost behind the browser?

Yes, the problem is that the calls to "grab focus" do not appear to work all the time on Windows 95 implementations of Java. We are looking for alternatives.

As an interim, the following is suggested:

Click on WebFunds on the W95 Start bar, which will bring it to the top. The signing dialog will always be above the WebFunds dialog.
Leave a corner free and move a signing dialoge into it. WebFunds remembers where you last had it, and will put it there next time. Initially, this place is the top left.

Incompatible currencies or Issuers

I attempted to buy some XXX from the YYY shop but it failed?

There are multiple issuers in existance, each with multiple currencies.

However, WebFunds is only capable of handling one currency and issuer at a time, so when you went to buy at the YYY shop, it didn't realise that this was not going to work because you don't have that currency.

So it happily signed the payment for something it didn't have, and that bounced. WebFunds is like that - it often lets you do silly things if you insist. This is because you probably know better, it is just a program.

The real issue here is that WebFunds should have warned the user that there was insufficient funds for the purchase (which is the same as no funds). Then, you would have known what was happening, and you could have acted accordingly.