FancyBox, PDF, and Google Chrome

Well, almost two weeks since I posted this.

Does anybody have any idea on how to overcome this issue?

Eric the Grey

Hi Eric, without link it is kind of hard to figure out what is going on. Could you maybe visit the test site https://demo.status301.net/easy-fancybox-sandbox/ where the latest development version is running? There are some PDF links on that page or the subpage https://demo.status301.net/easy-fancybox-sandbox/pdf-embeds/ (try the three PDF link versions, each time the first one on each new line)

Tell me if the browser plugin still crashes ??

Yes. I get the same errors as above.

As far as I can tell, it is only Acrobat that actually crashes. Everything else on the firs link loads fine, except for “Jpeg image without extension (class fancybox)” which just gives me a loading icon and never fully loads. I can click on it and stop it though, unlike the PDF issue.

It appears that the whole browser hangs when I click on the link, in fact, Windows 7 will ask me if I want to close the application if I click on it because it’s not responding to the system.

Testing on the second page, the Object/Embed links fail the same as above.

Opening the iFrame link seems to work well in several attempts, as does the Google docs link.

Interestingly enough if I click on the iFrame or Google docs viewer link, I can then go back and load the object/embed links and the standard links in the first page with no issue. It seems as though once the Adobe plugin has launched once, it is working just fine.

Perhaps the solution will be to use the iFrame version of the links. I’ve tested it on FF, IE, Chrome and Opera, and it works just fine on all of them.

Hopefully this information helps. I’d still prefer to not use iFrame and Google Docs if I can avoid it. I don’t much like iFrames, and the Google Docs embed code eliminates the hand icon from the PDF’s (which I personally tend to use more often than actual scrolling).

Thanks for your response. Let me know if you need any further assistance.

Eric the Grey

Why are you against the iframe method?

I’m just not a fan of IE and Microsoft’s specialized HTML.

Oh, but the iframe tag is perfectly valid HTML, XHTML and HTML5.

Well, you are correct, it is…

I went to w3.org and looked it up after seeing your post, and you’re right. I was basing my refusal to use them on an instructors instructions to never use them if I wanted my code to be compliant. I just never bothered to look before now.

That being said, as a general rule, I don’t use frames or tables if I can avoid them in any way.

I’ve figured out how to get things to work using the iFrame on the site I’m working on, and it’s working perfectly.

My only concern is that this site will have non-developers posting items, and the simpler the code, the better. Is there a way to tell the plugin to use iFrames by default for PDF documents (at least until this bug is worked out) rather than having to insert code directly into the post? The key here is ease of use for my end users.

Yes, this is planned for the upcoming release… ??

By the way, I agree that tables and iframes have been (and still are on some sites) widely mis-/abused and have gotten a bad name since then for any ‘self respecting’ developer and webdesigner but there are perfectly good reasons why they still exist. There are cases where tables do serve a purpose. Notably (and maybe obviously) for presenting tabular data / structured info. When well formed, even the simplest screen reader software can handle tables. But yes, when used for layout purposes, they are bad…

And a similar thing can be said about iframes. They used to be abused for layout purposes, dividing the browser window in different areas where content, menu and sidebar could live. Used in that sense, iframes are bad because search engines cannot cope with them, landing visitors on single iframe content instead of the ‘whole site’.

But when used to embed external content like a Youtube movie (the recommended way) or a PDF document inside your otherwise well formed site, that might just be the reason why iframes are still around ??

Ok. I suppose I’ll have to wait for the next release then.
Any date for that planned at this point?

No I cannot give you an ETA. I’m working on a complete overhaul of the source code but I do not know how much time before it will be stable.

If you want, you can modify the file easy-fancybox-settings.php like this:

Go down to the section that starts with

),
		'PDF' => array(

and find just below there

'type' => array (
	'default' => 'html'

change that to

'type' => array (
	'default' => 'iframe'

Then below that find

'onStart' => array (
	'noquotes' => true,
...
),

and remove all those lines (starting with the 'onstart' and ending with the ), line)

Thank you, that works perfectly.

Thanks for all your help. This really is one of the best lightbox plugins I’ve come across.

Has the latest update released fix this issue?