Here's a follow-up to my post from Monday about lost images in Rich Text fields. The solution was simple. Ironically (?) it was the client who suggested I try it. Sometimes working for a developer come manager can pay off! All that was needed was a simple doc.Save(). Somehow this cements the copied images in to the document.

Now, obviously, with the way I was doing this, saving the document causes problems. Because I was using a view's Form Formula the value of the Form field changes and saving the document means that anybody opening the document from a normal view will then see the print-friendly version. A different approach was needed.

Instead of using the view trick I created a Form that inherits values from the parent. The print-friendly link creates a new document that displays the content of all child documents. The link to the print version looks like this:

The new Print form has a WQS agent that contains the same logic as the original WQO agent. The difference being that it now combines with the save event, which means the images display. The Print form also has a $$Return field on it which redirects the browser to the print-friendly document created.

The downside to this (there's always one isn't there) is that we have an unwanted document left over. Hence the need for an extra scheduled agent that removes them each night. However, I'd rather this than have to use anything involved iframes or DHTML hackery. This feels more solid and the client seems happy - even if this all meant I delivered two days late. Assuming I get the clients permission I may make an article of this one day.

I'm at my parents' house writing this on my dad's donkey of a PC with nothing but dial-up. I'm supposed to be down in the garage helping him make the shelves but I'm having a "break". In fact all I was doing was sitting on a stool - near the heater - trying to keep warm as I read this book (intermediate level content, but worth a read by us all).

The re-design will go live tomorrow all being well. I will probably tell http q for the hour or so it's going to take me. Probably around 16:00 GMT. Don't be surprised if there's no connection to codestore.net. Should be worth the wait...