Aware in iframe?

hpl123

Hi all,
Is anyone using Aware in an iframe and can share some thoughts, tips etc. on how this works? DOES it work? Things to think about? Does it work in all browsers including Safari (IOS/MacOS)? Is Aware "robust" enough to be used on a frontend/public site (guest VP and iframe/aware on main site of a fairly busy site) or does it take too large a toll on Aware, servers etc.?

Appreciate any feedback here or PM. Thanks

joben

We tried this recently for one of our BSV's and we didn't get it to work.
Whenever we included URL parameters like logonGuest.aw?domain=yadayada we got a session timed out error.
We made a workaround instead to save ourselves some precious time.
We tried iframe, object and embed and no luck with either tag.

hpl123

joben wrote
We tried this recently for one of our BSV's and we didn't get it to work.
Whenever we included URL parameters like logonGuest.aw?domain=yadayada we got a session timed out error.
We made a workaround instead to save ourselves some precious time.
We tried iframe, object and embed and no luck with either tag.

Thanks, was this in all browsers? This is most likely due to the Chrome change if you only had the issue in Chrome: Cookie issue with new Chrome and build 2822 (comment)&hilit=iframe#p54776

cishpix

hpl123 wrote
DOES it work? Things to think about? Does it work in all browsers including Safari (IOS/MacOS)?

the answer is NO for Safari like below

hpl123 wrote
This is most likely due to the Chrome change if you only had the issue in Chrome: Cookie issue with new Chrome and build 2822 (comment)

That's right, the above link just for Chrome. There is no issue when you test it in Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox.
Maybe Support can give us a good trick again.

hpl123

As I thought with Safari and is a bummer. Yes support, a fix for this would be nice 🙂. The problem I believe is Tomcat trying to send cookies and Safari doesn´t allow third party cookies at all. If we could configure Tomcat to not use any cookies at all it might work but then the app might not.

hpl123

A couple of suggestions to get around the Safari cookie problem I read:

Detecting when it´s Safari and instead of the iframe, display information about Safari being an unsupported browser and instruct how to allow third party cookies (is a setting).
Detecting when it´s Safari and instead of the iframe, display a clickable link to open up the app in another window/tab.
Add a CNAME DNS entry to point to the iframe URL hence making the iframe URL a "first party" URL.
Embed/load the entire content of the webapp start page into a DIV and running it on the parent site instead of via an iframe. Is this or some variation or this or of embedding an Aware app possible? Anyone knows?

PointsWell

hpl123 wrote
As I thought with Safari and is a bummer. Yes support, a fix for this would be nice 🙂.

There's a lot of things that Safari is the poor cousin for which is annoying. CSS on safari has a bunch of overrides for things like field groups aka separators on Aware forms.

I don't have the CSS skills to fix, but there are plenty of other websites that can display these.

hpl123

PointsWell wrote
hpl123 wrote
As I thought with Safari and is a bummer. Yes support, a fix for this would be nice 🙂.

There's a lot of things that Safari is the poor cousin for which is annoying. CSS on safari has a bunch of overrides for things like field groups aka separators on Aware forms.

I don't have the CSS skills to fix, but there are plenty of other websites that can display these.

Yes, Safari is a crap browser but still widely used:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

I just hope other browsers like Chrome don't follow Safari with the cookie thing.

PointsWell

I was referring more to the number of things that Aware overrides as too hard and yet have been done elsewhere or have since been fixed but not updated within Aware

joben

hpl123 wrote
Thanks, was this in all browsers? This is most likely due to the Chrome change if you only had the issue in Chrome: Cookie issue with new Chrome and build 2822 (comment)&hilit=iframe#p54776

Ah, that makes sense.
It works in Internet Explorer and Firefox. Not in Chrome and Edge.

hpl123

PointsWell wrote
I was referring more to the number of things that Aware overrides as too hard and yet have been done elsewhere or have since been fixed but not updated within Aware

Ok, yeah as this browser is widely used, having these fixed would be nice. Maybe the latest Kendo library would fix them.

hpl123

joben wrote
hpl123 wrote
Thanks, was this in all browsers? This is most likely due to the Chrome change if you only had the issue in Chrome: Cookie issue with new Chrome and build 2822 (comment)&hilit=iframe#p54776

Ah, that makes sense.
It works in Internet Explorer and Firefox. Not in Chrome and Edge.

I can confirm, the fix by support fully solved this issue and the iframe works in all browsers (including Edge) except Safari (but Safari does work if you do a DNS change like suggested above). I would love to not have to do that though, it seems the only cookie Aware sends is the session cookie and disabling that and using some other mechanism for the session stuff might make all of this go away i.e all Aware apps would work fully via iframe in all browsers even Safari.

hpl123

So, no one is using iframe for their apps? Here is my use case scenario if anyone feel inclined to share some experience:
Using Aware via a iframe on frontend sites for multiple tenants. The Aware app would be a multitenant solution where each company have a Aware app iframe widget they place on their frontpage (displayed on the frontpage of Company A, Company B, Company N etc. etc. and the companies website visitors would then use the Aware app). All visitors to the site would not use the app i.e it wouldn´t be autoloaded/opened up, it would more be the iframe being activated when needed via clicking on a button. Would this work? I mean, websites can get a lot of visitors so in theory this could mean a lot of concurrent Aware users and Aware has to be able to manage it (in a way that makes sense from a pricing model perspective for my company i.e I can´t charge tons of money for it and have a separate server for each company). Is anyone using Aware like this or in a iframe on a public frontend website? I am mainly interested in knowing if Aware would be a good fit for something like this (load, performance etc.).

Jaymer

Having read the use case, this is as close as I got to that.

i needed multi-tenant, so i had to pass in something on the command line to attach the submitted form to... to tag the data to attach to the tenant. this was the main issue
since this AIM version, there have been tweaks/bug fixes so the same challenges may not currently exist.

hpl123

Thanks Jaymer and sounds pretty similar to what I am doing. Are you using this live still? Any thoughts on performance, server load as this is on a "normal" site etc.? Bot problems?

Jaymer

Am not affil. with that at all anymore - have no connection.
One concern I've always had is with session resources.
I'm not sure what Aware allocates internally for a session - because if I've set my timeout to 5 hours for users (so they don't walk away from their desk and get logged out), then for each of these temp users that hits the iframe, those same resources are in use for 5 hours also.
It may be nothing - dunno.

hpl123

Jaymer wrote
One concern I've always had is with session resources.
I'm not sure what Aware allocates internally for a session - because if I've set my timeout to 5 hours for users (so they don't walk away from their desk and get logged out), then for each of these temp users that hits the iframe, those same resources are in use for 5 hours also.
It may be nothing - dunno.

Very good point, support any comments on this?

hpl123

Jaymer wrote
One concern I've always had is with session resources.
I'm not sure what Aware allocates internally for a session - because if I've set my timeout to 5 hours for users (so they don't walk away from their desk and get logged out), then for each of these temp users that hits the iframe, those same resources are in use for 5 hours also.
It may be nothing - dunno.

At initial glance it looks like you are right: https://www.awareim.com/forum/post/55177. Tomcat might work some magic in the background so this isn´t a problem though as it would kind of be strange if it didn´t. I mean if it worked like that it would cause problems in most applications.