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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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