NextGEN 2.0.7 problems and return to 1.9.13

I had the same issue and found a solution.

I’ve also been using it for years. When it was installed years ago, I also installed the Slimbox plugin to enable that nice darken-the-screen to highlight the image and fade between images. Everything was working well until the upgrade.

After the upgrade, when clicking on a thumbnail, the whole screen darkened, then the image loaded underneath the darkened screen and there was no way to navigate from one image to the next. Clicking anywhere simply closed the darkened screen.

Solution: Disable any third party plugins that were used for jQuery or .js.

Then go into the Nextgen gallery settings, choose -> “Other Options”, -> “LightBox Effects”, then choose the one that works. I chose “Fancy Box”. (For some reason, “LightBox” cut off the caption included with the images, but “Fancy Box” does not.)

Now my galleries are working as before.

@keyalea: Thanks for posting the solution on the lightboxes.

@acekin: We’ve introduced a fix for several cases where the Add Gallery window was giving a 404. If you are comfortable with FTP, you can update the latest version with that fix here:

https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/nextgen-gallery-latest-beta

It will otherwise be in the next official public release, probably on Monday.

@keyalea, @photocrati, I use Shadowbox JS for other purposes as well, I indicated that in my post. So, removing it is not a solution. I suspect many other users may be doing the same. That said, I was indeed using Fancybox for NextGEN display and it was working fine until I discovered that Shadowbox was broken for all other functions. Not good!

@photocrati, I will wait for the fix although I am very comfortable with FTP. At this point I am losing my trust in the plugin. There has been many problems I have personally experienced as well ass reading the problems others reported. I even have a post on my blog on NextGEN. My humble suggestion is that you give yourselves a little more time to test the problems rather than getting many reports of broken functionality and then trying to fix it. Essentially you are releasing beta versions as public releases. Not a good practice.

@acekin: Thanks for the comments. You’re not the only one in the forums to express those questions, and I think they’re totally justified. I’ve take some time to write up an analysis of what I think happened here and what we’re doing about it here:

https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/open-letter-to-the-nextgen-community-from-erick-danzer/

I know it’s been bumpy but I do think we’ll get on top of most issues relatively quickly. I will say that plugin and theme conflicts will be some of the more time consuming to track down and fix since we need to go through them individually. Thanks.

@photocrati,

It is good to know that I’m not alone.
It’s not good to know that I’m not alone.

Neither thought made me feel better. But, I have read your long letter to the community, that was nicely done. Next round must better be really good, otherwise you may leave behind many users. While at it, please review the new UI, it is not as friendly as the old one and not because we are so accustomed to it. I have designed user interfaces for software, and I am not a fan of hiding most choices behind bars.

Now, let’s wait and see.

Cemal

OK, a new release, some problems are fixed, but …

I have upgraded NGG to 2.0.11 which seemed to behave better, but there is room for improvements. It does not break Shadowbox JS in other uses, but forces me to use one of its built in effects like Lightbox or Fancybox. Could there be another option there, “Custom” which will allow me to specify the needed, tiny code rel=”lightbox[%GALLERY_NAME%]” as NGG 1.9.13 allowed? Actually, that was inserted by NGG itself when Lightbox effect was selected. With that code Shadowbox worked with no other intervention. I tried using that coed snippet in NGG 2.0.11 and removed the script references but it no longer allows Shadowbox to handle the image displays. So, I did what a sensible person would do and downgraded back to 1.9.13.

Cemal

@acekin – Would you mind submitting this as a bug report to our developers here: https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/report-bug If it was behaving like you described in v1.9.13, we’ll want to maintain the same functionality where possible. Much appreciated. Aside from the shadowbox, are all other issues resolved in v2.0.11 for you?

Becky

@photocrati – I upgraded to the latest version of NextGEN 2.0.14 and the above problem persists. Not only NextGEN does not honor Shadowbox JS handling the image displays in its gallery, it breaks the functioning of Shadowbox altogether elsewhere where the image or video display does not involve NextGEN.

I am not sure how I want to, how can I proceed. But I am not a happy camper despite your mea culpa earlier. Maybe NGG will remain broken, maybe it will not play nicely with other plugins, these are the vision issues you need to articulate. If NGG will not tolerate the presence of another content presentation plugin not listed in its own Lightbox options you should come out and say it. Period! This is I believe 3 updates later this problem persists.

Cemal

Cemal – We can appreciate you are still experiencing these issues still and would really like to help sort them out. Granted there may be some plugin conflicts we may not resolve immediately or even in the near future but we are working on them and gathering as much information as we can from live sites experiencing these issues.

We would really appreciate your input via our Bug Report page here: https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/report-bug/

– Cais.

I can post the bug report once more, I had already posted that. I have a test bed site where I will be glad to give you admin access. NGG also breaks another plugin that facilitates selling photographs. I have to change the Lightbox effect to No Lightbox, but then NGG presentation suffers. It is a loosing battle. I will go ahead and post another bug report, essentially repeating the earlier one.

Although I appreciate you might be trying to fix all the problems, I am getting progressively more uncomfortable with the plugin I have used for many years on multiple sites I have developed. I think NextGEN Gallery is at crossroads, perhaps intentionally but it seems we may be parting ways. This will be my last ditch effort to provide information hoping that the bug(s) can be eliminated. I am not holding my breath!

Cemal

@acekin: Erick here. we actually have your bug report and I just checked that. Just to confirm: the plugin is otherwise working fine and the main issue you have right now is the conflict with Shadowbox JS and with the other ecommerce plugin? Your original issue about adding/inserting galleries is resolved?

If the main remaining issue is the shadowbox and other plugin conflict, I’ll note those.

But I just want to emphasize that the reason you are still seeing the it is because it’s a very specific conflict and it’s just not one we’ve addressed yet. We’ve been focused first on general issues with the plugin itself before third party plugins. It’s not that we’ve tried to resolve this and somehow didn’t succeed. And it probably won’t be resolved until we specifically at this conflict.

It sounds to me like 1.9.13 is meeting your needs just fine, and the main sticking point with 2.x is the shadowbox conflict.

What I’d honestly suggest is just rolling back to 1.9.13 and staying there until you see some explicit confirmation that we’ve resolved the shadowbox conflict. It may still take a bit for us to get to that one. At least in the meantime, you’ll have 1.9.13 working fine for you, you don’t need to be frustrated at each update, and you’ll know that when you do update, the main conflict that’s causing you problems is resolved.

Hope that makes some sense. And please know that I’ve added shadowbox to our list of known plugin conflicts. Thanks (Erick).

I have no intention of trying upgrades any more. If and when you release a version that specifically indicates that the conflict with Shadowbox JS and WP Photo Seller from Tips and Tircks HQ have been resolved I may give it another try.

Cemal