Author: Matthijs Kamstra

Lightbox Javascript to Flashbox Javascript
Bugs in the Lightbox script:

1. Lightbox doesn’t follow when the window is scrolled, I’ve fixed this bug
2. if no Image (broken link) is loaded, there is no way to stop this process, and you get no feedback

Bug #1: My fix for the scroll bug:

function onscrollChange ()
{
	var arrayPageSize = getPageSize ();
	var arrayPageScroll = getPageScroll ();
	var lightboxTop = arrayPageScroll [1] + (arrayPageSize [3] / 15);
	setTop ('flashcontent', arrayPageScroll [1]);

}

and in the showFlashbox function I started to check if the window is scrolled:
window.onscroll = onscrollChange;

Bug #2: This is a bug which will not be fixed in javascipt, but in Flash.

Lightbox HTML to Flashbox HTML

use this doctype in your html files, you need it if you want layers (

body,html  {height: 100%;margin: 0;padding: 0;}
#overlay{
	position: absolute;
	top: 0;
	left: 0;
	z-index: 90;
	width: 100%;
	height: 500px;
	background-color: #000;
	filter: alpha(opacity=60);
	-moz-opacity: 0.6;
	opacity: 0.6;
}
#flashcontent{
	height: 100%;
	position: absolute;
	top: 0;
	left: 0;
	width: 100%;
	z-index: 100;
	text-align: center;
	line-height: 0;
}

Flash and crossdomain

The first obstacle is the security box / crossdomain in Flash.
If you want to know more about the security box and crossdomain.xml, visit Martijn de Visser blog, he has an excellent explanation (with images!!!).

But in short, if you want to load images/ xml/ etc from a different server then your own, you need permission (crossdomain.xml) from that server.

This information is given to us by Macromedia Adobe:
loadClip (MovieClipLoader.loadClip method) which explains about crossdomain, security box and the MovieClipLoader (this is the method I use to load the images).

And here I seem to run into a bug: it should not be possible to load from another server without a crossdomain.xml, but I can.
When I follow my HTTP traffic between my machine and the Internet (using Charles) I don’t come across a crossdomain.xml when I load images but when I load xml form that same server I don’t get permission to do so (it can’t find a crossdomain.xml and so it’s not allowed to load xml from that server).

Xml loading from another server is not allowed without crossdomain.xml, but images doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Introduction to Flash experiment: Flashbox

In “Flatpack toys other then ReadyMech” I started to experimented with Lightbox JS v2.0 to show images without using a popup or leave the page. I used wp-lightbox2.
And I was impressed! It uses prototype.js which is a JavaScript Framework. Until I saw that wp-lightbox2 plugin (lightbox.js, prototype.js, effects.js, images, css and php file) is a total of 86,6kB….

So I looked for a alternative, and found thickbox which was smaller (total 31kB) and more versatile (not only images and galleries but also inline content, iframes and AJAX content). Thickbox uses jQuery which is a JavaScript Library.
I used the wp-thickbox plugin (20,8 kB) and don’t forget wp-jQuery (19.5kB). So to get thickbox working on WordPress it will add up to 40.3kB total (less then half of lightbox).

And here comes the trouble:
A couple of days ago there was an update of WordPress: WordPress 2.1 Ella and this version of WordPress uses prototype.
And prototype and jQuery can live together but can cause problem.
Which it did in my case: Thickbox didn’t work any more, and a theme I was working on (using jQuery) stop working too.

Update: Not functioning of Thickbox had nothing to do with WordPress 2.1 or with the wp-plugin. I was to hasty with my conclusion. Read the comments

So I changed this blog (not update to wp2.1 yet) back to Lightbox again, because of the prototype/jQuery issues and future updates of my blog.