300528 - paytrust.com - Paytrust's SmartBalance functionality fails in Mozilla

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[David Barr]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050628
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050628

SmartBalance is a feature of Paytrust's bill payment website that allows a user
to collect transaction information from a connected funding account. The primary
purpose of this is ensuring sufficient funds to pay logged bills.

My last successful SmartBalance update with Mac/Mozilla was 2005-03-25, using a
previous version of Mozilla. After much testing and interaction with PayTrust
technical support, I was asked to test with Windows. Yesterday, I determined
that Windows/IE use of SmartBalance worked. I just verified that Mac/IE use of
SmartBalance works. That means the failure with Mozilla is either a Mozilla bug,
or Paytrust using IE specific code.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to http://www.paytrust.com/
2. Click "Secure Sign-In."
3. Enter "User ID" and "Password," and click "Log in."
4. Select "View SmartBalance" from the list of links on the left side.
5. In the "SmartBalance Detail" page, click on "Update this information?" A new
window pops up.
6. Enter the username/SSN and password for the funding account and click on
"Submit." Get the "SmartBalance: Retrieving account information" page.

Actual Results:  
The "SmartBalance: Retrieving account information" hangs endlessly. Closing the
window, clicking on links, etc., is entirely successful.

Expected Results:  
After 15 to 30 seconds, the "SmartBalance: Retrieving account information"
window should close without intervention, and the "SmartBalance Detail" page
should show updated funding account information. I get this in IE.

I will be posting Page Sources for each of the pages. Perhaps an IE custom piece
of programming will be obvious to someone who knows better than I do. (Which
isn't hard. Testing I can do; programming is not in my talent set...)

I'm going to set this as Minor, but the workaround involves using the hated IE.
Feel free to upgrade the severity... :-)

Comment 1

[David Barr]

The "Update this information?" link has this target:

javascript:SmartBalanceUpdate('SmartBalanceDetailRSEvent','SmartBalanceDetail','0000LWV3QNZBWX44GCLT3KI0BAQ:ueek9fec',4310187,6144876)

Click on the link and get the funding account login page in a new window. The
source for that is next.

Comment 2

[David Barr]

Attachment: Source for SmartBalance page, where funding account log in information is given.

The location bar for this page shows:

https://billscenter.paytrust.com/csp/CSPServlet/SmartBalanceLogin?eventName=SmartBalanceLoginRSEvent&jsessionid=0000LWV3QNZBWX44GCLT3KI0BAQ:ueek9fec&payMethodAcctId=6144876


At this point, I enter my funding account information, click on "Submit" and
get the page titled "SmartBalance: Retrieving account information." Source and
location bar information for that is next.

Comment 3

[David Barr]

Attachment: Page source for the "SmartBalance: Retrieving Account Information" page.

The location bar for this page shows:

https://billscenter.paytrust.com/csp/CSPServlet/SmartBalanceLogin

This is the page that hangs endlessly. I saw something that suggested the
source for the two pages is substantially similar. I will investigate that
next...

Comment 4

[David Barr]

Never mind. A diff of the two page sources shows large differences.

Comment 5

[David Barr]

What I do see in both page sources is that style sheet settings assume Netscape
or Explorer, with Explorer. No mention is made of Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.
I've noted this to Paytrust support.

Comment 6

[Zook Valem]

The source code from both testcases showed

--snip--
if ((navigator.appName == "Netscape") && (parseInt(navigator.appVersion) > 3))
   document.write("<link rel=stylesheet href=\"/csp/ws/PMB/css/fonts-ns.css\"
type=\"text/css\">");
else
   document.write("<link rel=stylesheet href=\"/csp/ws/PMB/css/fonts-ie.css\"
type=\"text/css\">");
--snip--

So the problem is that it defaulted to an "fonts-ie.css" file.  But I'm unable
to get the source code of the "fonts-ie.css" file.  Probably looked for it in
the wrong filepath myself.  So, can't tell but I have a hunch that the problem
isn't with the CSS script because it deal with the look of the web page.  So,
the problem is most likely with the bad Java Script or server-side script or
something.  I would have to dig it a little more deeply.  Could be a Tech
Evangelism bug but can't tell without doing more research on the scripts...  Not
sure if those testcases are complete or incomplete.  I can't tell since I don't
have the account at PayTrust myself.

Comment 7

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

David, are there any errors in the JS console?  Clear the console before the steps to reproduce, then look at it once the bug shows up.

Comment 8

[David Barr]

(In reply to comment #7)
> David, are there any errors in the JS console?  Clear the console before the
> steps to reproduce, then look at it once the bug shows up.

This is weird. The only errors I get are from the main page: http://www.paytrust.com.

Error: Expected ',' or '{' but found '<'.  Ruleset ignored due to bad selector.
Source File: http://www.intuit.com/css/quicken.css Line: 376

Error: Expected color but found '#'.  Error in parsing value for property 'color'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: http://www.intuit.com/css/quicken.css Line: 858

Once I click to log in, I don't get any further errors.

Also, I didn't mention before, but this works with Safari. I'm still uncertain if this is a Mozilla thing, or an evangalism thing.

Comment 9

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> This is weird. The only errors I get are from the main page:

Those are CSS parsing errors; shouldn't affect this issue...

Comment 10

[Andrew Schultz]

this worksforme with linux seamonkey trunk 2005110504
I added a BASE tag to the second attachment and disabled some cookie-related javascript (which redirected to the actual site).  The page loaded and claimed to be retrieving my account info.

Comment 11

[David Barr]

(In reply to comment #10)
> this worksforme with linux seamonkey trunk 2005110504
> I added a BASE tag to the second attachment and disabled some cookie-related
> javascript (which redirected to the actual site).  The page loaded and claimed
> to be retrieving my account info.

I'll get the claim that PayTrust is retrieving my information. However, that retrieve will never complete.

Comment 12

[Andrew Schultz]

ah, ok.  I understand.

The scripts the page loads are
https://billscenter.paytrust.com/csp/ws/PMB/common.js
https://billscenter.paytrust.com/csp/ws/PMB/calendar.js
https://billscenter.paytrust.com/csp/ws/PMB/calculator.js

The page has some scripts of its own, but they look cosmetic.
It's hard to do much more without knowing what happens when the page is loaded in IE.

Comment 13

[David Barr]

(In reply to comment #12)
> ah, ok.  I understand.
> 
> The scripts the page loads are
> https://billscenter.paytrust.com/csp/ws/PMB/common.js
> https://billscenter.paytrust.com/csp/ws/PMB/calendar.js
> https://billscenter.paytrust.com/csp/ws/PMB/calculator.js
> 
> The page has some scripts of its own, but they look cosmetic.
> It's hard to do much more without knowing what happens when the page is loaded
> in IE.

I found the "Java Messages" window in IE, but, so far as I can tell, the Smart Balance process didn't generate any messages to throw in that window. At least, nothing showed up. If you have a minute to write a cook-book for me, I'll try some stuff.

Comment 14

[Dustin Marquess]

(In reply to comment #11)
> (In reply to comment #10)
> > this worksforme with linux seamonkey trunk 2005110504
> > I added a BASE tag to the second attachment and disabled some cookie-related
> > javascript (which redirected to the actual site).  The page loaded and claimed
> > to be retrieving my account info.
> 
> I'll get the claim that PayTrust is retrieving my information. However, that
> retrieve will never complete.

The same happens for me if I try to setup "eBill", that it where Paytrust retrieves your bill electronically via a third-party web page.  I'll enter the account username & password for it to retrieve, and it pops up a window with the same progress meter that the SmartBalance page has with a message that it can take up to 30 seconds.  The window never closes and nothing ever happens.

Comment 15

[Curt]

This is actually a duplicate of bug 311573.  I also submitted this under a different bug recently.

The reason this page hangs in Firefox 1.5 is because Firefox has changed it's behavior with regards as to how the document.form.action is handled (it's not an absolute instead of a relative URL)... this is apparently based on a non-existent change to the DOM2 spec (or perhaps some would argue a future change to the spec, but until it's actually published...).

The reason for the page to hang is because an event is called that compares the action to a string... since it'll never match up now that the document.form.action returns an aboslute URL, the page just hangs for an event to be called where the action will match.

Comment 16

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

If they want the relative url they should rather then using
document.form.action
use
document.form.getAttribute('action')

Comment 17

[David Barr]

Still failing. FYI only.

Comment 18

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

So a fix has been suggested, has anyone contacted the site?

Comment 19

[Curt]

A fix for this has been in the works for a while, but these things need to be tested across all platforms and that takes time.  I believe the fix is being targeted for release by June.

Comment 20

[David Barr]

Works now. I'll say this can close. (OSX 10.4.8, SeaMonkey 2006081104)