Platform
Compatibility
onCue has been tested on:
- Windows 95, 98 & NT4 with IE4 or Netscape using
the Sun JRE 1.1.8
Extra functionality is offered when Microsoft Office 97
or above is also installed
The software should work on other Java 1.1 virtual machines
that support JNI.
i.e. earlier versions of the Sun JDK/JRE and perhaps later
versions of Microsoft jview.
Please let us know what works for you!
We are currently working on a version for Linux, and are
investigating the feasibility of a Macintosh version.
Problems
and Solutions
When I use the Scoot service, it asks me to register.
Why?
Scoot requires you to register to use its services.
We respect this in their system, and so do not try and get
round it.
Simply register, and the service will be available to you.
The Royal Mail postcode system asks me to allow my browser
to accept cookies. What's this about?
Cookies are tokens that identify you to the web server.
Change your browser preferences to accept cookies.
Whether you are already configured to accept cookies or
not, this message always appears. It's a problem with the
Royal Mail service. Simply continue, and it should all work
okay.
The Royal Mail postcode service doesn't appear and I
get an error message instead.
This is because the service operates on a non-standard
port (8080) on the web server, which your firewall blocks
access too.
Ask you systems administrator to open up the firewall to
allow you to access this service.
onCue always uses the same web browser window - I'd
like it to open a new window for every web search that I
do.
By default, onCue uses a system call that has that behaviour.
If your default web browser is Internet Explorer, try holding
down the SHIFT key when you start a search from onCue -
you should find that it starts the search in a new window.
Unfortunately, this does not appear to work with Netscape.
However, you can change the aqtive.browser.path and
aqtive.browser.args parameters in the configuration
file to force it to open a new window each time - see the
web browser configuration
section for details.
When I double click on onCue nothing happens - what
can I do?
The usual reason for this is that the Java virtual machine
has failed to start properly. This can happen if you had
a previous installation of the Sun JRE or JDK that was uninstalled
incorrectly. The reason for this is that is that later versions
will try to use registry entries to find the appropriate
library files, rather than looking in their installation
folder.
You can check whether this is the case by starting an MS-DOS
command prompt window and trying to run the jre
program - it should complain about not being able to find
the javai.dll. There are two ways to fix this: either download
and reinstall the JDK/JRE; or use regedit to delete or amend
the JavaSoft registry keys. The latter is only recommended
if you really know what you are doing.
I was working with onCue when suddenly it disappeared
and a window talking about a JREW and some gobbledy gook
appeared. When I clicked okay to get rid of it, an error
message appeared. This all sounds very nasty - what did
I do wrong?
Absolutely nothing! On certain system setups (usually
earlier Windows 95) the Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
can crash. If this happens to you, you have been unlucky
- but if you could send us the details of your machine setup
and exactly what you were doing at the time, we'll pass
on the details to Sun.
Unfortunately, there isn't likely to be a lot that we can
do to fix this. However, it won't have hurt your machine
in anyway, and you should just be able to restart onCue
and carry on from where you left off. In certain circumstances,
we have found that upgrading to Internet Explorer 4 can
help. However, as this sometimes brings its own complications
we don't recommend that you do that unless you were planning
to anyway.
I have Microsoft Office on my machine, but I don't get
the spell checking or Excel services offered to me - why
not?
These services only work with Microsoft Office 97 or
above. However, with certain earlier versions of Windows
95 our software sometimes can't use COM to talk to Office
even if it is the right version.
Unfortunately, there is not a lot that you can do to rectify
the first case - except perhaps upgrade your version of
Microsoft Office. We will be looking at supporting older
versions of Office in future releases, but we don't currently
know how feasible this will be. The latter version is sometimes
solved by installing something like Internet Explorer 4,
but this can bring problems of its own.
I copied the word 'C++' to the clipboard, but onCue
didn't suggest anything - why not?
onCue tries to be clever about suggesting appropriate
services, but unfortunately in this case it doesn't recognise
'C++' as a word.
Try copying 'C++ programming language' or something slightly
more descriptive to nudge onCue in the right direction.
There are likely to be other situations where onCue will
either not suggest services, or suggest inappropriate services
- in these situations please forgive onCue and perhaps try
copying some slightly different text to get the behaviour
you're after.
I was using the SumIt service to add up some numbers
and it seemed to get it very wrong - why might that be?
Currently the SumIt Qbit is not as intelligent as we
would like it to be - in particular it will add up every
number that it finds in a selection - including dates (which
are usually the problem).
We will be looking to correct this in future releases,
but in the meantime, as with any calculator, be aware that
SumIt may not have added up quite what you wanted it to.
Why, when I choose a web service from onCue, does my
web browser window open but the results take a long time
to appear/not appear at all?
The web services that onCue directs you to are run by
many other companies, and as with any web site, thay are
sometimes unavailable or slow to use.
Unfortunately there is not a lot that anyone can do about
this - you could try sending an email to the web service
provider if you have a lot of problems. Another place to
try would be the organisation that provides you with your
access to the web (your Internet Service Provider or ISP).
However, if you have persistent problems, please email us
at the address below with details of the service.
Sometimes tooltips and menus seem to have fallen behind
the main onCue window - they're not much use there because
they're mostly hidden!
This happens because we haven't quite got to grips with
the Java event model. It should occur only vary rarely and
is completely harmless.
Simply click on the onCue window, and this should correct
itself. If you can get this to happen repeatedly then please
tell us how you did it, and we should be able to fix this
in future releases.
I like using onCue, but I keep forgetting to start it
up - can I get it to start automatically when I start to
use my computer?
Yes.
See the Easier Access to
onCue section of the installation guide.
Something really weird just happened, I was just using
onCue, and when I started typing again a little window with
the words Clipboard Data appeared - what's that
all about?
Ah - you've stumbled across a secret feature! If you
click on the onCue window and start to type, the text will
appear in a window and automatically be copied to the clipboard
ready for onCue to suggest some actions. Once we'd implemented
this, we realised how useful it would be, and have decided
to include this as a proper feature in future releases.
However, at the moment it doesn't work 100% of the time,
so if you make use of this feature you may find it loses
the odd character.
If you've managed to make this window appear by mistake,
simply close it and paste (or type) the text into the location
it was originally meant for. The window will never appear
if you always click on the window you want to type into
before hitting a key.
Other
Problems
We hope you won't find any further problems with onCue,
but if you do - please let us know about them so that we
can fix them in future releases. Either send an email to
problems@aqtive.com
with details of your machine and operating system and what
you were doing at the time the problem occurred. Alternatively,
go to the user
community area of our website and leave us a message
there. In either case, please try to give us as much detail
as you can!
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