Problem selecting categories for a Web Content Article

[Akke Bengtsson, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

We have a problem browsing among available categories to assign to a web content article.

The problem appears both when creating a new WCA and when editing a previously created article. The symptom is that the subframe showing available categories is fixed in size (about 14 lines) and the last part of a list of available categories longer than that falls below that subframe and is inaccessible except through search.

The peculiar thing is that an other Liferay instance created from exactly the same Liferay bundle on a Windows computer does not show this behaviour, but the subframe there contracts and expands to exactly accomodate the present category and subcategory selection. Initially suspecting our own custom portlets for creating problems, we can recreate the situation even when using a pure vanilla Liferay bundle setup.

The bundle used is liferay-portal-tomcat-6.1-ee-ga3-sp3-20140815110131003.zip and the recalcitrant instance is running on a RHEL 5 computer.
We have patched both Liferay instances to the full extent available at the time of writing, i.e. using patching-tool-19.zip and liferay-portal-fix-packs-6.1.30-ee-20141205.zip

(Fix packs from as recently as november 2014 rectified a few browsing problems elsewhere in the portal, for instance in the creation of new subcategories through the control panel - portal - categories menu. Before that change, that user interface in certain situations just showed the first of several available subcategories but that problem disappeared after we had applied the latest fix packs.)

Has anyone else encountered this problem and why does it only appear on our Linux setup?

[Andew Jardine, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

Hey Akke,

Strange indeed. Do you see any Javascript errors in the scenario where the area does not expand?

[Akke Bengtsson, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

Unfortunately, no such clues. No javascript errors at all.

Perhaps a good thing to have one working instance to compare with. I have been poring over the Google Chrome "inspect element" feature the last two days to compare what is sent to the browser in the correct and the faulty case but have at least up to now not found any difference at all. My eyes are bleeding! A huge haystack.

Edit 20141230 16:00 Finally found the direct cause of the symptoms described. The definition of the container for the category tree is:
<div class="lfr-tags-selector-list lfr-categories-selector-list" id="aui_3_4_0_1_7785"> If you look at the parameter values in effect for lfr-tags-selector-list, you discover a parameter height=256px. (lfr-categories-selector-list seems to be empty) There is no height parameter in the same place for my Windows Liferay 6.1.30-instance. If I in Chrome element inspector cross out the height parameter, the category window immediately changes into a more useable form. Nothing you do as a mere Liferay user obviously. I can't tell yet where the height value comes from and above all why it only shows up in the Linux Liferay instance so I have not really solved the problem.

[Andew Jardine, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

Can you send me your list of categories and I can try to reproduce on my side? I have an EE instance with all patches and I use Linux.

[Akke Bengtsson, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

There is nothing particular with the categories I used. I have also been able to reproduce the phenomenon on a pure vanilla 6.1.30-instance by creating 20 dummy categories and then tried to assign them to a dummy web content article. The effect that the category list container has a fixed height even appears if I don't have any categories defined at all yet.

[Akke Bengtsson, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

Oh - and Good Hunting of course!

No offense I hope but you will have more trouble importing my categories than creating a few skeleton ones and a skeleton WCA from scratch.

[Andew Jardine, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

No problem -- I was more curious about the number of categories themselves than what the actual names were . I never assumed that a particular name would cause the issue. I'll give it a shot on my side later today and let you know what I see.

[Akke Bengtsson, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

If you encounter the fixed size window, it can only take 11 lines I believe but as I said - if you can reproduce my problem you see it even before there are any categories at all.

[Akke Bengtsson, geändert vor 9 Jahren.]

Any luck reproducing my woes?

If I should be able to report the error as a possible Liferay bug, somebody else must be able to reproduce it.

In our 6.1.20-instance configured for swedish, the category selection popup window also has a fixed size but if the category list becomes longer than the subframe could show, a scroll bar appears enabling us to reach even the categories at the bottom.

In the meantime, I also tried some other variants like a pure 6.1.30 sp3 setup from a tomcat7 bundle but configured for english. Then the category selection popup suddenly came up with an expandeable subframe instead of a fixed one!!! What is going on? (I would possibly prefer the old variant with a fixed size subframe but a scroll bar when needed but I suppose there are valid reasons for the present choice.)