This chapter contains descriptions of common problems and their solutions.

I don't see the images I expect.

• Check settings in the Site scan pane of the Settings dialog
  • Show pictures from main page
  • Show pictures from linked pages
    • N level(s) deep
    • Including pages from other domains
  • Start scan at/after URL
  • End scan at/before URL
  • Only scan URLs that begin with
  • Scan image maps
• Check settings in the Image selection pane of the Settings dialog
  • Minimum displayed picture size (KB)
  • Minimum displayed picture height (pixels)
  • Minimum displayed picture width (pixels)
  • Skip files with certain names - Click Show file names to see what files, if any, are being eliminated by name
  • Skip pictures from certain hosts
    • Click Show hosts to see what host names, if any, are being excluded from the search for images.
    • Check that this popup has the correct setting. The possible values are Skip pictures from certain hosts, Skip pictures from all hosts except main one and Display pictures from all hosts.
  • Only display pictures from pages with certain keywords - Click Show keywords to see what keywords, if any, are being used to limit the display of images
  • Skip GIFs
• Have you waited long enough? In particular, if a page contains a number of links before the images of interest, and those links go to pages with a number of small images that aren't displayed, it could take Envision quite some time to get to the images of interest. Try using the Start scan at URL field to eliminate undesired links from the start of the main page.
• The site uses Javascript, Java, Flash or other unsupported technologies. Envision only supports standard HTML.
• Have you deleted the images in question? In the Image selection pane of the Settings dialog, click the Show deleted button, and see if the image is in the list of deleted images.
• Envision supports HTTP but not HTTPS (used by secure servers). Images displayed by your Web browser that have URLs beginning with https:// will not be displayed by Envision.
• If an error occurred when trying to download a particular image, Envision will not attempt again to download it until a re-scan is forced.
• If an error occurred when trying to download a page that includes images, Envision will not attempt to display those images until that page is successfully scanned.
• See Tips on Making a Good Show.
• Envision's scan log may contain some clues.

The images I see are pixelated. How do I smooth them out?

• Assuming that it's a high quality image to begin with, pixelization occurs when an image is drawn larger than its original size. You can make Envision's window smaller, or check Don't expand images in the Show pane of the Settings dialog.

The images appear stretched or zoomed.

• Check that you have not selected Fully fit, stretch if needed or Fully fit, zoom if needed in the Fitting images into windows popup in the Show pane of the Settings dialog.

Animated GIFs don't work (do not animate).

• Check that you have not selected Fully fit, zoom if needed in the Fitting images into windows popup in the Show pane of the Settings dialog. Images that are zoomed will not animate.

It takes much longer to advance between images than I've set.

• For slow sites and/or large images, downloading the image can add significant time to the total.

I've checked Substitute for thumbnails, but I'm still getting thumbnails.

• Substitute for thumbnails works only for thumbnails that link directly to an image file, not to a page containing an image.

I don't see the box where I enter a URL for a Web site.

• The toolbar is hidden. Type cmd-T to display it (or hide it again).

I've made changes to settings, but they haven't taken effect.

• Certain settings don't take effect until the site is re-scanned.

In the Show pane of the Settings dialog I've set Show picture's caption text to Always (or Briefly), but I don't see any captions.

• Not all images will display captions. It depends on how the Web site was written (image captions are optional).

Envision does not seem to be correctly starting (ending) at the Start scan at URL (End scan at URL) I entered:

• Be sure Start scan at URL or Start scan after URL (End scan at URL or End scan before URL) is selected as appropriate
• Be sure the indicated URL does not appear earlier in the Web page than you expected. You may wish to use your Web browser to search the Web page's source code to be sure.
• If Show pictures from main page is checked, all images from the main page that meet display criteria will be displayed, whether Start scan at URL (End scan at URL) is used or not.

A demo Web show included with Envision returns an error.

• The site underlying the Web show may have moved or become unavailable.
• Be sure you are connected to the Internet.

There's a PDF document in my show, but I only see the first page.

• Envision only displays the first page of PDF documents. This is a limitation of OS X.

My AppleScript returns an error when I try to run it on Jaguar.

• There is a known bug in Jaguar that was fixed in Panther. There's an implied "location" of the make command that was supposed to be optional, but it wasn't in Cocoa AppleScript support on Jaguar. Just add the words at front after the make command in your script:
  
  tell application "Envision 1.0"
  set a to make new document at front
  end tell
  
  Scripts with an explicit at front after the make command will run fine on Panther.

While experimenting with a show, I entered a new URL into the URL box and clicked the Play button, but the new URL is not being used.

• Choose Refresh from the Show menu, or type cmd-R. See re-scan for details.

I use Envision to set my desktop picture, but it doesn't show up.

• Change picture: in the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preference (use the Desktop System preference with Jaguar) must be unchecked before telling Envision to set the desktop picture.

I want to delete an image from a show, but Envision just beeps when I hit the Delete key, and the Delete item in the Edit menu is grayed.

• The item is already in Envision's list of deleted files, but Skip deleted pictures is unchecked in the Image selection pane of the Settings dialog.

I have the display interval for images set to 10 seconds. This seems to work for some slides, but others display for a shorter (or longer) time.

• An animated GIF displays as a series of images, with the display time for each image controlled by the animated GIF. To confirm that this is happening, reveal the Info drawer and see if the name of the image file changes while the images in question are displayed. If it does not, you're looking at an animated GIF.

I made a change to the Image selection pane of the Settings dialog, which should have increased the number of images displayed in the show, but when I look at thumbnails I don't see any additional (or all the additional) images I expected.

• When changes are made in the Image selection pane that cause more images to be displayed than were previously, those images may not appear immediately in thumbnail mode. To be sure you're seeing all thumbnails that correspond to the new Image selection pane settings,
  • re-scan the site, or
  • go to single image view and loop through the whole show once. You can speed up this process by setting Seconds between pictures to a low value.

I don't see the poster image I expect.

• The poster image may not be accessible. Probably either the image no longer exists, or the poster image's site is down. The URL used for the poster image is stored in the Poster URL field of the Show pane of the Settings dialog.

Even though I've deleted all thumbnails, one image remains in single-image mode.

• The one remaining image is the poster image, which is not represented by a thumbnail.

• When a show is run in montage mode, the Show menu's Set as poster item is enabled only when the main window is in front.

Image search seems very slow, and gets a number of errors.

• Image search returns images which are often large, from a large number of Web sites. It is to be expected that some of these sites may be quite slow, or may no longer exist.

Shows seem to run more slowly on my iPhone or iPod touch than on my Mac.

• If your iPhone is on EDGE or 3G, the data transfer rate will be much slower than WiFi.
• The iPhone and iPod touch are much slower doing things like parsing long HTML pages and displaying images than the Mac.

Shows look different on my iPhone or iPod touch then on my Mac.

• There are a number of minor display differences between Envision and iEnvision that may affect the way some shows look.

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