10 minute Tip - I have a blank parameters window in Eclipse when using IE11

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There is a known compatibility issue between Eclipse and Internet Explorer 11. The problem is that you do not see your parameters when trying to preview your report.  All you see is this:

Which is not very helpful!

IBM support has provided a workaround option that, initially, seemed to resolve the problem – at least with the Eclipse 371 release for Maximo 7.5. It seems that these changes do not always work with Eclipse 431 (Maximo 7.6).

This solution goes as follows:

1) Close the Birt Designer and open the eclipse.ini file (it is located in the same directory as the eclipse.exe in your Eclipse install folder)

2)At the end of the script, insert the following lines:

-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.DefaultType=ie,mozilla
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.IEVersion=7000

3)Start the Birt Designer and preview the out of the box report to ensure that the popup now appears correctly and displays as intended.

If the provided workaround does not fix the problem, one other option you can use is to avoid using the Preview option from within Eclipse and instead use the Run/View Report menu option and select “in Web Viewer” or “as PDF” option. These should give you a prompt panel where you can enter your parameters.

You could also keep a PC around that still has an older IE version and do your Birt development on this PC.

Another approach would be to test your reports in a Maximo environment. Make your report changes and then publish your design to Maximo and test it there. I’m not a huge fan of this option, but hey, maybe you can make it work for you.

Last, but not least, continue to scour the web searching Eclipse forums for others who may be experiencing this issue. This is not a Maximo issue, per se, so there may be additional suggestions out there that we are not yet aware of and the knowledge on the Internet grows daily.

Until next time …