Assuming that I was the culprit, doing something wrong as usual, I've started this discussion in WD,SS,WE 'How do I...' section but was advised by larryd to move it over to this section. Here are the initial posts and what's happening.

When this is happening the usual problem description can be sent to microsoft, which means that I have this technical info (it's huge and doesn't tell me anything since I am a non-tech), but if it is of any use here I could make it available.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Klimt,

Can you post a link to the project file as it was just before the fatal error?

I have it only on my computer, can I mail it to you? I suppose it's ims file you are interested in.

Maybe it's not a bug after all. I have just started from scretch again but with a slight difference from my first attempt. The first time I tried to follow SS tutorial 'Drop-down menus' and made only one subbutton (Duo Pontén) first, then I copied that button in order to make a second subbutton (Belarus). All the special FX where already in place. The second time I did everything in the same way except I copied all the buttons before applying special FX. Maybe that was the cause of this problem?

BTW following the above mentioned tutorial I found out a slight problem, it could be that my interpretation of what's written isn't correct but on the other hand if I misinterpreted it somebody else might too . If somebody is interested I will be happy to explain.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Klimt,

Yes please, email would be fine. I can strip the project down to the salient features and pass it on to VM.

I think it probably is a bug -- SS shouldn't stop like that whatever you do to it.

If there is a problem with the tutorial, please do point that out too. So I'm interested, and I'm sure VM will be too.

Hi Bruce,
I've just e-mailed the project to you. Looking forward to your findings. I don't know but maybe it would be of interest for you to have a look at the project that worked the whole way through (for comparison with the one that didn't), if so just let me know and I send it to you as well.

About the tutorial: "Drop-Down Menus"
I followed the instructions step by step but after the section "Make another mouse over on the left-hand list" the menu is not showing the 'right' buttons unless you once again re-organise the z-order after making a group of the left-hand list.

I've been having the same problem. Here is my original post as a reply to Klimt's original post.

"I've been having the same problem. I've had problems with SS's "Submit" form template. Couldn't get it to work and each time I tried to work with one of the text boxes the program would crash and I'd get the same error msg. I finally deleted the whole thing and started from scratch. I have a feeling that in some way something got corrupted. Now it works, I'm able to submit a form, and it goes to my mail box, but I'm having two problems that I don't know how to correct."

Since that post earlier today. The same problem has recurred in addition to other things happening to the SS "form.ims" template I'm using.

Here is a link to the specific page on my site. The site is still unfinished so you will see unfinished pages.

http://www.armengraphic.com/Contact.html

I have been able to simplify Klimt's project down to a single form button. SiteSpinner crashes whenever you open the form editor.

Copying the button has no effect, the copy also crashes on opening the form editor.

So this looks like a similar form of corruption to that B.Alex reported just above.

More tomorrow...

CRASHED AGAIN: I have completely deleted the form that I had set up and started from scratch. I set everything up, including info in the "Hidden Fields" and tested sending the form. Nothing happened. I didn't receive the form which should have gone to my email "info@armengraphic.com".

When I went back to make corrections in the form editor I right clicked on the "Submit" button and the program crashed and I got the same error msg. If I try to open the form editor using any of the 4 text boxes, which I have in the form, it works fine. Although, the info that I input in the "Hidden Values" has disapeared.

Yesterday, it didn't matter what part of the form I tried, it crashed anyway.

There is a simplified version of Klimt's project file here.

Double-clicking the button to open the form editor crashes SiteSpinner every time.

This is the start of the code generated by the abnormal form button

<form name="error in form">  

This is the code generated by a more normal form button:

<form id="Oform4" name="form4" action="" method="GET">

There may be some clues in there -- I'm not sure what. And I have no idea how to get a project into that state -- someone else might have some bright ideas...

Thanks for all your excellent detective work Bruceee!

I looked at your simplified example and this is what seems to be happening:

Normally, when you double click the button to open the form editor, the form holder (the IMS object that represents the 'form' which contains the form items such as buttons etc.) is read and its contents are displayed in the form tab.

But, in this case, the form holder has somehow disappeared. SiteSpinner is then trying to read the non-existent object and that is causing the crash.

Of course, SiteSpinner should never crash and should just warn you if something is missing but in this case, a bug has allowed the error to slip by. We will fix this for the next update.


In the meantime ... Here is a workaround that should resolve the problem:

1 - Open FormCrash.ims

2 - create a new form button

3 - double click the new form button to open the form editor

4 - in the form tab, click the 'New Form' button 4 times to create 4 new form holder objects.

5 - Press OK to close the form editor.

You should now be able to open the problem form item.

You will need to adjust the new form settings if you don't want the default values.

Once everything is ok, you can delete the new form button. The extra form holder objects will be removed the next time a Clean Components is done. (done automatically on Publishing by default or use menu: Edit > Clean Components)

This is how the fix works:

In the case of FormCrash.ims, the missing form happens to have an ID index of 4. Since there are no other forms in the project, you need to create 4 new form objects so that the last one will have and index of 4. Once that exists, the specified form holder will be found when you open the button in the form editor and so will not crash SiteSpinner. In other projects with the same problem, you may need to create more form holders in step 4 to get to the missing index. It doesn't hurt to create extra ones.

P.S. I am not sure that this is the same problem that B. Alex is having since it sound like he can already open the form editor.

Thanks Bruce for all your help and thanks Harpo for the fix to the problem. It would be interesting to know what caused it in the first place. I thought I was doing everything in the same way as always, but obviously not. The other aspect that puzzles me is that when I made a copy of the same project and followed the instructions in the same way as the first time (except for making a copy of the button before applying Special FX) enerything worked just fine.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Klimt,

I did some testing and the form holder can be removed if you select it in the quick properties object tab and then press menu: Edit > Delete. It seems unlikely someone would do that accidently but it is possible. I haven't found anything else, yet, that would cause it to go missing.

You can also delete it with the Object Editor > Components tab.

That doesn't seem to be the answer though (or at least not the whole answer!). If you delete the container object in this way, you can still edit the form normally. Using a form button in a fresh project, I couldn't induce the Klimt crash. And it still seemed to generate correct code.

The form container object is normally invisible if you click the space it occupies. However if you include it temporary group (selection), it will then become visible when you click its space. A little anomaly that may or may not be important

Bruce might be on to something I recall doing several times while experimenting with different options. Grouping, ungrouping, copying the temporary groups, deleting etc.

Something is not quite right. We will look into it further.