Monday, January 14, 2008

Disappearing Welcome Page

One of the most annoying bugs in Delphi 2007 must be the disappearing Welcome Page. Sometimes, when you do Close All, IDE decides that Welcome Page contains highly sensitive material that is not intended for your eyes, and deletes the contents. Like this:

Empty Welcome Page 

By trial and error (and much luck) I have found a way to restore it.

Step 1: Click into the edit box next to the 'house' icon. Text (bds:/default.htm) will be selected.

Step 1

Step 2: Press <Backspace> to delete the text.

Step 2

Step 3: Press <Enter>. Nothing will happen, but the trick won't work without this.

Step 4: Click the 'house' icon. Welcome Page should reload.

Working Welcome Page

If that doesn't work, you can always close the welcome page and reopen it via View, Welcome Page menu. Is is, however, faster to try click-backspace-enter-click trick first.

14 comments:

  1. Anonymous22:26

    So, What is the meaning of TCodeGear.Create() ? I have same case.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just something that was used by CodeGear when CodeGear was created to advertise the new name.

    Somehow, this phrase exists in one of the images belonging to the Welcome Page.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Do you have any specific steps that cause this problem? I've not seen or experienced it, and I do a File|Close All hundreds of times a day. Please log this in Quality Central (http://qc.codegear.com) with as much information as you can provide.

    Thanks,

    ReplyDelete
  4. You can also close it and reopen the welcome page from the View menu.

    The TCodeGear.Create() text is actually displayed when the welcome page is loading (sort of like a Please Wait... prompt). The issue with this bug is that something corrupts the loading of the welcome page.

    The html/xml/js code is not the issue, it is the code in the IDE that is causing this to fail.

    It is very annoying as I use the welcome page quite a bit - especially the favourites section.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Or you could just add the welcome page button to one of your toolbars - then you will be covered even when you click "close all other pages" and accidently nuke the home page.

    ReplyDelete
  6. TCodeGear.Create()

    was the first word appearing at http://www.codegear.com in late 2006. And a few weeks later the official CodeGear website was finally launched.

    ReplyDelete
  7. @JED: Yes, I know - I wrote about that 'workaround' at the very end of my post.

    @Xepol: That's a good idea, too.

    All in all I can't understand how this stupid error is still present in Update 3 :(

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous08:07

    "most annoying"? Not really. I don't really care that much. I'd rather have CodeGear work on real problems and just drop the welcome page. It has some nice features but I wouldn't miss it.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Actually, I think I would miss the home page if it disappeared. I have learned to use it quite effectively.

    As for the bug, it seems possible that it lies in IE itself, or the mechanism that is used to tie into IE itself, and what with version issues, OS versions etc, that this might be an impossible bug for CG to track down and fix.

    I do wish there was a way to mark the tab so it could not be closed - it can be annoying to nuke it with a close all other tabs, when what I mean and want is all other tabs except this one and the home page.

    ReplyDelete
  10. @allen: Sorry for late response. A notification of your comment has got lost somewhere in the internet tubes and I'm not checking blogger home page all that regularly :(

    No, I don't have any specific steps but this happens both on my XP and Vista machine, both having D2007 with latest updates installed.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous20:04

    All the tips mentioned don't work for my installation (Vista).

    Any other ideas?
    Henk

    ReplyDelete
  12. Close the Welcom page and reopen it via menu (View.Welcome Page).

    That always works.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous00:50

    Not always :(

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous20:38

    this worked for me with C++Builder 2010. Thanks for the tip!

    ReplyDelete