What happened to my Advanced Page Widget Lock?

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mariner62 asked Jun 12, '23

What happened to my Advanced Page Widget Lock?

Hi,

I own a couple of systems that are linked to VRM. I am the Admin.

Until recently, there was a lock control on VRM which allowed me to lock the advanced page to help prevent inadvertent changes. Great feature, except this control is no longer visible on VRM. I've tried using PC and IOS devices but it just doesn't show.

What happened to that control?

I'm currently needing to enable some new widgets to help with fault-finding, but the widgets are locked and I can find no way to unlock it. I cannot remove existing widgets and I cannot add new ones.

I've tried logging out and logging in again but that didn't fix the problem.

Help !

VRM widget vrm

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Answer 1 · 2023-06-12T13:37:36Z

JohnC answered · Jun 12, 2023 at 01:37 PM

@Mariner62

Still there for me..

Maybe look in Settings > Users to see you're still listed as having Full Control..

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mariner62 commented · Jun 12, 2023 at 01:52 PM

@JohnC yes that's what I want to see, but I don't. This is what I see.

Thanks for the suggestion... I checked the Settings/Users. I am the only user, and I have "Full Control" selected.

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JohnC ♦ mariner62 commented · Jun 12, 2023 at 02:25 PM

@Mariner62

Ok. It might be related to the device you're using to access the page. Sometimes makers introduce changes that aren't compatible, then Victron have to follow. Can you test again using a different device? We'd need to nail this down to an issue with a particular device before passing it on for attention, so please try to be specific with detail.

Mine's a Win10 pc, which is common. Yours may not be.

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mariner62 JohnC ♦ commented · Jun 12, 2023 at 02:55 PM

@JohnC

The device and OS details are as follows:

Device DELL XPS13-7390

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10510U CPU @ 1.80GHz 2.30 GHz

Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.8 GB usable)

Device ID B4B71F65-105E-46D4-A07A-FA24733161E0

Product ID 00330-52579-90527-AAOEM

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch Touch support with 10 touch points

Edition Windows 10 Pro

Version 22H2

Installed on ‎12/‎03/‎2021

OS build 19045.2965

Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19041.1000.0

Note that this device has worked fine for some time with the lock control available. It's only recently that the lock control has disappeared.

Note also that the lock control is not shown when using my iPhone 10 (Model No NQA82ZP/A), IOS 16.4.1 to access VRM.

For completeness, I can try some other devices later today.

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mariner62 mariner62 commented · Jun 12, 2023 at 03:24 PM

@JohnC

Some more device tests:

My partner's iPhone Xs, IOS 14.4.2 does not show the lock control.

BUT ...

My partner's iPad Air 2, IOS 15.7.5 does show the lock control!

1 out of 4 ain't bad?

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JohnC ♦ mariner62 commented · Jun 13, 2023 at 10:55 AM

@Mariner62

Not so bad. At least you can unlock it, and hope it stays unlocked. But this is a bit strange. I tried myself to reproduce it with different browsers and another old Win 7 pc, without any luck.

You could try alternative browsers too, as these are often guilty of raising quirks.

I'll flag it at a higher level and see if someone has some clues or can take a look. Thanks for reporting it though, we don't need features that come'n'go at random.

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mariner62 JohnC ♦ commented · Jun 13, 2023 at 02:58 PM

@JohnC,

Unfortunately its not as simple as unlocking it. According to the iPad which shows the lock control, it isn't (and wasn't) actually locked. I can add and remove widgets on the iPad, but I cannot add and remove widgets on any of the devices that do not show the lock control. The behaviour is that "no lock control showing" = "behave like it's locked even if it's not".

However there is good news... I followed your suggestion and tried using Edge as the browser instead of Chrome and the lock control appeared on screen using Edge.

I then returned to Chrome and hey presto it then showed up on the Chrome browser. Interestingly it showed up on Edge as unlocked, but when it showed up on Chrome it showed immediately as locked (which may well have been how I left it before it disappeared). I was able to unlock it

It seems that the lock control is very dependent on the browser. Maybe the VRM programmers were trying to make it a browser specific control and have caught themselves out?

The lock control still does not appear on my iPhone.

I will keep a close eye on it.

Many thanks for your good suggestions.

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Answer 2 · 2023-06-14T08:43:30Z

Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) answered · Jun 14, 2023 at 08:43 AM

Hi @Mariner62

The locks are indeed browser-specific, locking/unlocking the installation only affects one user and one browser. It is a front end UI control.

I think the reason the lock is not shown is if the window width is small, so if you had two browser windows next to each other that might have been the cause.

On mobile devices the lock is never shown because you can not change the widget order there :)

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mariner62 commented · Jun 14, 2023 at 09:09 AM

Hi Guy,

Thanks for your response.

I did look for any browser width issues, but that was not the problem. I had Chrome running full screen with no horizontal scroll bar. I closed Chrome and switched to Edge full screen and logged into VRM there. Edge showed the lock control immediately. I then opened a Chrome browser again and logged in and found the lock control was now present in Chrome. The switch of browsers appears to have cleared the fault.

Regarding the mobile devices. I am confused by your statement that the lock control is not available on mobile devices.

The lock control does appear for me on an iPad, and on there I can enable and disable widgets.

On my phone, the lock control does not appear (I can confirm it was there previously), and I am no longer able to enable or disable widgets. So all I have are the widgets that were enabled last time the lock control was available on my phone. I cannot disable the ones which are enabled and I cannot enable the ones which are disabled. I'm sure that is not the intended operation of VRM for clients using a phone.

Hope you can clarify this.

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ mariner62 commented · Jun 14, 2023 at 09:40 AM

Hi,

The lock main function is disabling resizing and moving the already enabled widgets around.

On a phone as there is no positive tap mode, it can happen accidentally that just tap scrolling could move a widget. Also the widgets are presented as a single size in a list.

So it has been removed from the mobile/narrow horizontal resolution UI all together.

I suppose iPad falls something in the middle with a large enough resolution width so that widgets are resizable and movable, so it's important that it is able to be controlled again.

As for why it was not in chrome, and then re-opening it appeared, I can only speculate that it was as described above without seeing a screenshot in the wide screen mode without the lock visible.

It should be possible to see the modes adjust responsively by widening and narrowing the browser window.

In the attachments here. You can see a narrow UI with the widget buttons at the very top and lock mode hidden, and then the wide UI with the widget buttons a few cm from the top and the lock toggle visible.

It is also possible to 'trick' the iPhone UI by decreasing the browser zoom in landscape mode to 50% - and then the resolution is is wide enough to reveal the lock toggle again (though the site is otherwise quite unusable at this resolution imo).

The setting is not shared between browsers, it is stored locally to your device in the browser, not on our server. you can see here I am in chrome and safari with different modes simultaneously. There it is possible to change the arrangement in unlocked chrome, and still have it change in the 'locked' safari.

This is not intended to be a security measure or anything, just a front end user interface convenience to prevent a mistaken re-arrangement. It was added to VRM at the same time as the ability to move the widgets around and resize them, which was not always possible.

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mariner62 Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented · Jun 14, 2023 at 11:44 AM

@Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager)

Hi Guy, sorry my "Further to my last comment" was sent before I saw your detailed response.

Your explanation about how the lock control appears/disappears as a function of screen "pixel availability" makes it much clearer and I now understand what is happening here. I suspect my PC Chrome browser was having some scaling issues. I don't understand exactly why these were alleviated after I used the Edge browser, but lets face it we see some pretty strange things happen with browsers from time to time.

I tried your iPhone "trick" in Safari browser and the lock control showed up as you expected. I then toggled it, and immediately I was able to once more enable and disable widgets in Safari. I've gone back to normal zoom and won't go near that control again!

Thanks for jumping in on this, you have alleviated a lot of confusion.

Hopefully one day we'll be able to re-order the widgets on the iPhone display (other than just being able to send one to the top). That was a useful function.

Thanks again

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mariner62 mariner62 commented · Jun 14, 2023 at 11:06 AM

@Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager)

Hi Guy,

Further to my last comment, I have spent some more time looking at potential browser issues on my iPhone.

I have just found this:

I have always used Safari to access VRM. Currently this does not show the lock control and also does not allow me to enable/disable widgets.

Since the problem is browser-related, I downloaded Chrome to my iPhone and logged in to VRM with that (whilst also logged in on Safari).

With the Chrome browser I do not see the lock control (same as safari), BUT I am able to enable and disable widgets. This may be the operation that you were expecting, i.e. cannot see the lock control, but still have the ability to enable/disable widgets. What do you think?

Note that I have entirely different widget sets enabled/disabled when I log in using my PC browser compared to my iPhone browser. It's not the case that my iPhone is locked to the same widget set as my PC (which I think may be what you implied in your response above?)

Curiouser and curiouser.

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