Javascript and jQuery (Fancybox) question

Question

Javascript and jQuery (Fancybox) question

I'm using the Javascript function below for Twitter sharing (as well as other services; the function code is simplified to just Twitter for this question) that grabs the to-be-shared page URL and title and it is invoked in the link with onclick. That results in the Twitter share page loading in a pop up browser window, i.e.<img src="/images/twitter_16.png" onclick="share.tw()" />

In order to be consistent with other design aspects of the site, what I'd like to be able to do is have the Twitter share page open not in a standard browser window but in a Fancybox (jQuery) window.

Fancybox can load an external page in an iFrame when the img or href link contains a class (in this case class="iframe" ) in the link and in the document ready function in the header.

Right now, of course, when I give the iframe class to the link that also has the onclick share.tw(), I get two popups: one browser window popup with the correct Twitter share page loaded, and a Fancybox jQuery popup that shows a site 404.

How can I change the function to use Fancybox to present the Twitter share page? Is that a correct way to approach it? Or is there a better way, such as implementing the share function in jQuery, too?

Thanks...

Javascript share function:

var share = {
   tw:function(title,url) {
        this.share('http://twitter.com/home?status=##URL##+##TITLE##',title,url);
    },
    share:function(tpl,title,url) {
        if(!url) url = encodeURIComponent(window.location);
        if(!title) title = encodeURIComponent(document.title);

        tpl = tpl.replace("##URL##",url);
        tpl = tpl.replace("##TITLE##",title);

        window.open(tpl,"sharewindow"+tpl.substr(6,15),"width=640,height=480");
    }
};

It is invoked, i.e.: <img src="/images/twitter_16.png" onclick="share.tw()" />

Fancybox function, invoked by adding class="iframe" in the img or href link

$(".iframe").fancybox({
'width' : '100%',
'height' : '100%',
'autoScale' : false,
'transitionIn' : 'none',
'transitionOut' : 'none',
'type' : 'iframe'
});

Answer 1

No matter how you change your design, using an iframe with Twitter isn't going to work.

If you replace the URL http://twitter.com with anything else eg http://www.godaddy.com - it will work. I tried something like below:

$('h1').click(function(e) {
  $.fancybox({
    href : 'http://www.godaddy.com', // http://twitter.com will not work here
    title : 'twitter window',
    width : 640,
    height : 480,
    type : 'iframe'
  });
});

This is because Twitter uses javascript to "break" iframes on purpose for security reasons.

So your idea of showing a FancyBox iframe in this way cannot work if using Twitter.com. There is confirmation of this and some ideas on getting around it here: (like using API calls from an iframe) - http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/b1bca9ef074086c7

For your "other services" that hopefully don't have the same restrictions (I suspect some of them might) then the other answer further down the page from wajiw seems a good compliment.

Answer 2

My approach would be to remove the fancybox initialization and trigger it directly from your share function:

var share = {
   tw:function(title,url) {
        this.share('http://twitter.com/home?status=##URL##+##TITLE##',title,url);
    },
    share:function(tpl,title,url) {
        if(!url) url = encodeURIComponent(window.location);
        if(!title) title = encodeURIComponent(document.title);

        tpl = tpl.replace("##URL##",url);
        tpl = tpl.replace("##TITLE##",title);


        $.fancybox({
                        'href' : tpl,
                        'title' : title,
                        'width' : '100%',
                        'height' : '100%',
                        'autoScale' : false,
                        'transitionIn' : 'none',
                        'transitionOut' : 'none',
                        'type' : 'iframe'
                        });

        return false;
    }
};

I'm not sure my syntax is correct, but something like that should work for you.

Another different attempt may be to use a dummy anchor, alter it's attributes, and trigger click on it:

jQuery(document).ready(function() {

        $("#dummyLink").fancybox({
                        'width' : '100%',
                        'height' : '100%',
                        'autoScale' : false,
                        'transitionIn' : 'none',
                        'transitionOut' : 'none',
                        'type' : 'iframe'
                        });

        return false;
    }
  };
});
var share = {
   tw:function(title,url) {
        this.share('http://twitter.com/home?status=##URL##+##TITLE##',title,url);
    },
    share:function(tpl,title,url) {
        if(!url) url = encodeURIComponent(window.location);
        if(!title) title = encodeURIComponent(document.title);

        tpl = tpl.replace("##URL##",url);
        tpl = tpl.replace("##TITLE##",title);

        $("#dummyLink").attr('href', tpl);
        $("#dummyLink").attr('title', title);
        $("#dummyLink").trigger('click');
        return false;
    }
};

HTML:

 <a href="#" title="" id="dummyLink" style="display:none;"></a>