TWO questions

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Author Post
Mas94
Guest
Hello,

I really appreciate the work you have put in. This is one of the cleaner lightboxes I have run into.

1) If you want straight HTML (from a seperate page), what is the best way to do it? I see some "lag" when using the IFrame. Like the Iframe error message for a split second, then the content loads.

2) This one is more important. The FLV video file I want to launch doesn't launch. I get an iframe error, THEN I get a download box for the FLV video. How can I get it to work?

Thanks.
Administrator
Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 3382
If you're getting a brief error message when loading an iframe, it's because the urlGraphics and urlLanguages options are not set correctly based on your install. In other words, you have installed somewhere other than in a "floatbox" folder at the root of your site, but have not updated the paths as required. Just about every install I see fails to set these.

Folks, I don't know how I can be more clear than when I say, right near the top of the instructions:
Quote
IMPORTANT: If you place the floatbox files in a different folder than your site's root folder you need to change the "urlGraphics" and "urlLanguages" paths defined in the options section of the floatbox.js file and also modify the floatbox.js and floatbox.css include paths in your page headers.

Because this configuration oversight is nearly universal, the next version (which is almost ready for release) will auto-detect its install paths. But for now, you have to tell floatbox where to find its supporting files.

Ok. Rant over. As to your questions.

In addition to iframes, you can use AJAX or hidden divs as a loading source for html content. This is clearly described in the docs, both online and in the instructions.html file included with the zip download. There's also examples of each type on the demo page.

FLV is not a supported file type. It's not a supported file type in your browser or flash player either. If you try to load it directly, you will get the same invitation from your browser to download the file. Nor can you show an FLV on a web page using object/embed code. FLV files need to be played by an SWF player. You load the player into floatbox (or into your browser or web page) with the configuration the player requires to load and play your FLV file.

There's a couple of flv player recommendations in this topic, along with a little bit more info about licensing and why I don't bundle an flv player in with the floatbox distribution.

Cheers...
Mas94
Guest
Thanks for the quick reply. Forgive me for my slight ignorance. I'm a bit confused as kind of new to this. The Floatbox folder is placed immediately in the folder that webpage (which is accessing floatbox) is on so is that correct? like if the page is on "/sitea/foldera/folderb/index.shtml" then the floatbox is located at "/sitea/foldera/folderb/"/sitea/foldera/folderb/floatbox. Is that what you mean? Do I still need to change the urlgraphics, languages paths? This isn't my site so I had to put it where they wanted.

I used the photo gallery thing and all of that loads correctly. It's just when trying to bring in HTML, there is lag, and the FLV problem of course.

In terms of the FLV are you saying I need to download an SWF player and place it inside the folder the FLV file is in? These aren't my files, again, so the FLV file is theirs but it does need to be played. Very important.

If I use the hidden DIV or other method, I have a question. The content would be coming from a seperate page (server side includes). Basically I'm using a regular text link which is supposed to call up the floatbox and the info inside would be from the page being called. The info isn't on the main page. So is the hidden DIV method the most appropriate here? Like I think I would be putting the "include" link HTML inside the "hidden" DIV correct?

Thank you again so much for your assistance.
Administrator
Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 3382
Re paths:
In the example you gave, it sounds like the urlGraphics folder should be '/sitea/foldera/folderb/floatbox/graphics/' and the urlLanguages folder should be '/sitea/foldera/folderb/floatbox/languages/'. Don't be thinking it's complicated. It's just the path on your site to those folders, wherever you put them. It's equivalent to getting the paths right on the hrefs inside your anchors.

If you're uncertain, a good test is to try the paths in your browser's address bar. For the graphics, try http://yourdomain.com<paste urlGraphics path here>blank.gif. If you get page not found, your path is wrong, if you get nothing, your path is right. For languages try http://yourdomain.com<paste urlLanguages path here>en.json. If you get the English language text file, you're good to go.

Re flv:
I won't try to cover how to use an flv player here. That's not floatbox support related, and it's covered well enough by providers of flv players. Maybe start here.

Re hidden divs:
No, the hidden div does not contain a link to your content. It contains your content. That is, inside the hidden div would be the html code that you want to use for floatbox display. If your content is coming from a different page, then you're loading it as an iframe. (I'm skipping over loading that content with AJAX as I'm pretty sure you're not getting into that.)

Cheers...
Mas94
Guest
Yes I have been using an IFrame. There is just like a one second lag where it gives the Iframe not connecting page then it goes to the correct page.

I got the FLV to work I believe.

I do have one problem though. It seems like the photo gallery is not loading in IE (I'm using 7). It gives me a stack:overflow at line 0 error alert. It works in FF and Safari.
Administrator
Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 3382
If you get the urlGraphics path correct, you won't get the 1 second error message. You'll get the nice little spinning loading gif instead for that one second.

I've never heard of a stack overflow error with floatbox before. If you've got an online example where I can take a look, I will.
Mas94
Guest
I changed all the url path stuff.

The error comes with I use the floatboxGroup. It works in FF and in Safari. But I keeps giving me the error in IE8 (so far).

Maybe I will try to reboot to see if that helps. What does that error mean? Thank you.
Mas94
Guest
I rebooted and it still has the same problem. Do you have a private message thing on this forum. I don't want to print the URL publically. Thanks.
Administrator
Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 3382
contact form

Or, click on any forum member's name (including admin) and you can get their email address if they've enabled that in their profile (which I have).
Mas94
Guest
OK I sent it. I see this problem has been reported before as well in your forums.
Administrator
Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 3382
You've almost got the urlGraphics and urlLanguages path right. You need to put a slash at the beginning of those paths. Without the slash, the path reference is relative to the current page location. With the preceding slash it is an absolute path, or relative to the site root if you prefer to think of it that way.

Yeah, someone once said they got a stack-overflow but they never followed up with any info.

I can't reproduce a stack-overflow error on your page in either IE7 or IE8. What do I have to do?

Your page structure is messed up. That might be the source of your problem. In outline, it goes like this:
<head>
</head>
<body>
<script></script>
<link></link>
<style></style>
</head>
<body>
</body>
<html>

Get rid of those two extra tags highlighted in red and add an opening <html> tag before your <head> tag. Maybe with a fixed up document structure you won't get the IE browser errors anymore.

Let us know...
Mas94
Guest
Hi,

I definitely didn't code it. I'm just adding things to the page. I wouldn't code that way lol. I'll try to make the edits you mentioned. Lets see if it works.
Mas94
Guest
I changed the paths.

In terms of the other stuff. I gave you the wrong link. I'm emailing it to you right now. I don't believe the coding is the same in there at all.
Administrator
Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 3382
My time is not being well spent on this.
The new page you sent me doesn't even use floatbox. It uses lytebox. And it's got the same page structure problems as the previous page you referred me to, plus the additional problem of no doctype header.

I really don't mind helping out with floatbox issues, but we're going to need to be more focussed and efficient to pursue this further.
Mas94
Guest
My mistake. I'm trying to work and work on this at same time. The first time was correct. I looked thru the code and saw where I was missing the <html> tag but I didn't see the </head>+ <body> tag u spoke about. I got it to sort of open now but its loads very slow and it says image not found even though they are there and working in FF.
Mas94
Guest
I do appreciate all of the help. I am wondering why all of the images load in FF and Safari but only some of them load when I try the gallery in IE (I'm using 7 right now)? The other images give me a "pic not found".

Edit: Looking through the images, I see image 1,2,3,8,11,12,13,14,16,17,19 and 21 don't load, while the rest do in IE. They all load on the other 2 browsers. They are also all jpeg files.

Also the original link I sent you was the one I am working on. I put an <html> tag on top but I didn't see any extra </head>or <body> tag that you spoke about?

Thanks for all the assistance.
« Last edit by Unknown on Fri Mar 27, 2009 8:13 pm. »
Administrator
Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 3382
I see you've got the urlGraphics path correct now. Good. Some progress.

As for the bad structure the following two lines appear in two places on your page:
</head>
<body leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">

Delete the first occurrence of those two lines and keep the second occurrence.

To avoid confusion, you should consider removing the following remed-out lines a little bit below the above-mentioned lines:
<!--<HTML>
<head>
<title>{$title} - {$pagename}</title>-->


You mentioned problems with slow-load times for iframes and a stack-overflow in IE8. I'm not seeing either of those problems. The iframes are not instantaneous but come in at probably less than half a second. Normal web behaviour. And I can't replicate a stack-overflow anywhere. Again, do you have specific steps for me to follow to replicate that?

But you do have a problem with IE and your purported jpegs. It's not a floatbox problem. If you paste the url for the those problematic jpegs straight into IE's address bar, they don't load, and yet they do in other browsers. (I want to emphasize, this is outside of floatbox - just a straight .jpg file load.) The problem is, those .jpg files aren't jpeg files. They are either .raw or .tiff files (taken by an Olympus camera) that have been renamed with a .jpg extension. Other browsers are kind enough to handle the file type mismatch, but IE, reasonably enough, chokes on them. You can tell which ones are not real jpegs by the file sizes. The 815KB for the one I looked at is waaay too big for a jpg. When I convert it to a jpg it's a more reasonable 51KB. And that's the solution to your image loading problem. Open all those big 'uns in a photo editor and convert them properly to jpeg encoded files. You will make IE very happy.

I really should be charging for this. These page structure and image format issues have nothing to do with supporting floatbox. But here's hoping it helps get you to where you want to be with those pages.
Mas94
Guest
OK thanks for the info. I'll have to wait until Monday to check it out though. I'll let you know if it works.

Sending something via contact form.
Administrator
Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 3382
Working with other people's pages can be its own special kind of hell. Good luck.
Mas94
Guest
I know the feeling. I just figured out why I couldn't see the "double body codes". The page is using server side includes and when you view source, it doesn't show that, just brings in the code from the other page. So You get two of those.
Mas94
Guest
OK I got most of it working. Running into one big error though. I emailed you what it was. Thanks.

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