282125 - SiteCom router - JavaScript: function "not defined" due to NULL at line end

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: Dutch, defect)

Description

[driver64]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; de-AT; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217

The web-interface of my Sitecom DC-202v4 generates pages containing js e.g.
http://x.x.x.x/login.html
  ...
  <script language="JavaScript" src="./js/shared.js"></script>
</head>
  ...
  <script language="javascript">
    ButtonSizeShow("button", "", "Clear", "document.tF.reset(); return false;",
"Clear", 60);
  </script>
  <input type="submit" value="Submit" style="{width:60px;}">

- The JavaScript-Console reports 
  * error: illegal character
    source: http://x.x.x.x/js/shared.js   line: 308
    } 0x00 EOF
  * error: ButtonSizeShow is not defined

- The Button "Submit" is shown, not the "Clear" button.
- The "Clear" Button appears in a Netscape 4.78 [de]-20010625

This is a rather serious problem for me as it appears not only on the login
page where "Submit" is more essential but also on the configuration pages where
I don't see any "Apply Changes", "Save" or "Reboot" buttons which utilize the
same function ButtonSizeShow that is defined at the end of shared.js. It seems
that the JavaScript parser just misses the closing bracket because it ignores
the whole line due to the illegal character 0x00 at the end of the (last) line.

I will report this to Sitecom, too, but I have only few hope that they will
correct their firmware just for not sending one zero-byte...

For now the only solution is to have the 'other' browser on my PC, too, solely
for managing that device.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. have a js function defined in an external .js file closing } 0x00 EOF
2. use the external script and the function in an .html page
3. open the .html page in Mozilla 1.7.5
Actual Results:  
The function (ButtonSizeShow in my case) is not being executed, i.e. the buttons
are not shown on the displayed .html page.

Expected Results:  
The js parser should recognize the closing bracket of the function definition
regardless of the illegal character 0x00 that follows instead of ignoring the
whole line.

Comment 1

[driver64]

Attachment: part of shared.js - defn of ButtonSizeShow at end of the file

Comment 2

[driver64]

Attachment: messages in the javascript console

Comment 3

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

-> js engine, but isn't this a problem of the webpage?

Comment 4

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

ECMA-262 is pretty clear.  Let me guess, IE accepts NUL chars (ignoring them)?

Google for "Sitecom DC-202v4" hits .de and .nl pages.  Is this a German product?
 What component should this bug belong to?

/be

Comment 5

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

yep, IE does ignore null bytes. sitecom.com is registered in the netherlands.

Comment 6

[driver64]

On sitecom.com I found the firmware only in one version with english ui.
The unit itself was obtained in Germany and is labeled "Made in China".

Comment 7

[Patrick]

[e-mail] you wrote that you'll contact the site owners. Have you
heard from them?

Also what kinda product is their "Sitecom DC-202v4"?
Thank you.

Comment 8

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

Per comment 0's "The web-interface of my Sitecom DC-202v4 generates pages
containing js e.g. http://x.x.x.x/login.html", it's pretty clearly a router of
some sort with a web interface (built-in web server).

/be

Comment 9

[Patrick]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Per comment 0's "The web-interface of my Sitecom DC-202v4 generates pages
> containing js e.g. http://x.x.x.x/login.html", it's pretty clearly a router of
> some sort with a web interface (built-in web server).
> 
> /be

i pretty clearly figured that much out myself as well [sic]. 

They have no general contact e-mail address on their site [and WHOIS doesn't
list a clear one either.] So the only form of providing feedback to them seems
to be via the product feedback form they have on their site. And this basically
is a drop down menu with 100s of products so it will greatly help me to know
where to look for the product so i can contact them....

Their feedback form lies in a frame that can be traced to 
http://www.sitecom.com/support2.php
But even searching the source of that page [which includes] the full form
doesn't lead me to the product mentioned in this bug report.

Hence i'm wondering what kinda product it is.

Comment 10

[driver64]

On the sitecom.com contact form select "Broadband xDSL / Cable Router 4S" and in
the Article code should already be "DC-202"; on the 'Products' selector or the
driver search (finds manuals, too) you find it under "Data communication".

The message entered into the form will be mailed according your language
selection to a support team in one of the countries. (When I filled in the form
in english I received a reply from U.K. asking me to direct my questions and
complaints to the german team and also to cite all preceeding posts.)

The german supporter responded that the interface is optimized for IE and if I
get js errors from my browser I should use IE, too - in the sense that for a
low-cost-device I can't expect them to verify the scripts to work properly in
any browser.

Nevertheless he promised to forward the incident to his dutch collegue
responsible for firmwares (Feb 16). From there I didn't get anything by now.

Regards, D.

Comment 11

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Is this still a problem? Confirming for now since it's clear that there was indeed a bug here.

Comment 12

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

assuming fixed (old device and probably unsupported)