sIFR 2.0.2 Final Release

posted May 25th, 2006, 30 comments, tagged

sIFR 2.0.5 has been released. Please upgrade to sIFR 2.0.5.

I’ve just released sIFR 2.0.2, which is a maintenance release for the problems caused by the “Eolas patch”. JavaScript changes from version 2.0.1 are:

  • Problems due to the Eolas related modifications to IE should be solved. Thanks to Christian Welzel for testing!
  • A problem where the CSS class name foo-bar would match foo has been solved.
  • Problems where the browser reports an alien user agent (like GoogleBot) have been solved.
  • Improper detection of Flash transparency support in OmniWeb 5.1 have been solved.
  • You should now be able to export sIFR as Flash 8.

CSS (in sIFR-screen.css) changes are: * No more object tab obscuring the text when AdBlock is being used.

There is still no insight into what is causing these problems, so please deploy this patch to ensure everyone can see the headlines. You’ll only have to replace the JavaScript file (make sure not to override your configuration) and add a CSS rule for the AdBlock workaround.

sIFR 2.0.5 has been released. Please upgrade to sIFR 2.0.5.

Download sIFR 2.0.2.

30 responses

  1. trovster says:

    Oh, so you’ve included the little bit of CSS for hiding the adblock object, cool.

  2. Mark Wubben says:

    Yup, thanks for figuring it out!

  3. Mark says:

    Hey Mark,

    I have used sIFR for awhile…nice work you guys! I have one quick question that I can’t seem to figure out.

    Is there a way that I can configure my CSS so that the replaced text, the sIFR, does not cover up any dropdown menus? I use the Suckerfish model as my base, and only upon using Flash do I run into this problem.

    Anyway of fixing this, without too much trouble?

    Thanks for any help!

  4. Mark Wubben says:

    sWmode: 'opaque’ should do the trick, although I’ve heard reports of this not working. I’ll be looking into it more closely for sIFR 3.

  5. Thanks for sharing…

  6. Jeremy Aldrich says:

    Okay so I might be doing something wrong because this is my first implementation of Sifr but i noticed that there is a difference in whitespace below the replaced text in IE 6 SP2 and Firefox or Safari. Has anyone found a work around for this, If so it would really be appreciated.

  7. Nuno Neves says:

    Now that´s a fine piece of code you got there. I am using it for the first time and actually it´s quite easy.

    I have just one question… I want to use sIFR in front an image using H2. Is there a way to put the background transparent?

    … is this a troubleshoot area? :(

    Thanks a lot and keep up!

  8. Mark Wubben says:

    Nuno, please see the How to.

  9. Jeph says:

    “Is there a way that I can configure my CSS so that the replaced text, the sIFR, does not cover up any dropdown menus?”

    Like Mark said, wmode: opaque should fix it, although if it doesn’t wmode: transparent has worked for me before.

  10. Mag says:

    Strange thing I didn’t face any problems in version 2.0.1 with IE. Anyway welcome to all claimed enhancements and fixes.

  11. Mark Wubben says:

    Yes, the problem did not occur in all IE installs (luckily).

  12. I just discovered that the CSS update to kill AdBlock tabs doesn’t work with AdBlock Plus, which I happen to have installed. Fortunately, ABP uses a rather idiosyncratic z-index value. If you change the selector to the following, the code works to kill object tabs for both Firefox extensions:

    .sIFR-flash + div[adblocktab=true], .sIFR-replaced div[style*="z-index: 65535"] { display: none !important; }

    You must use the descendant selector rather than the adjacent sibling selector, because ABP will sometimes change the location of its tab to ensure that it stays visible. So far, however, it’s always been a descendant of the element with the sIFR-replaced class.

  13. Mark Wubben says:

    You can also use this snippet from sIFR 3:

    /* 
      Hide Adblock Object tab: the text should show up just fine, not poorly with a tab laid over it.
      Conveniently, the object tab is always in a div, so we hide all divs directly inside the replaced element.
    */

    .sIFR-replaced > div { display: none !important; }

  14. Yep, looking at the generated source code for my sIFRed pages again it looks like that would also work. It has the added benefit of being simpler, which I always appreciate. :-)

  15. Kyle Jackson says:

    Yep – the code Mark posted is actually the only thing I could find to get to get sIFR and AdBlock to play nice… and it certainly does have the added benefit of being much simpler.

    Thanks!

    ..k..

  16. Jiri says:

    I found a bug with FireFox and wanted to share. If you have multiple sIFR object of the same type (let’s say h2) on the page, and the first one has a link, the rest won’t show at all. After hours of playing with it, I discovered what to do to. I just need to have some tag inside the h2, for example: My title And the “My title” will now be displayed. Didn’t find it in the bug list, but saw people talking about issues in FireFox. No problems in IE of this kind.

  17. Jiri says:

    I found a bug with FireFox and wanted to share. If you have multiple sIFR object of the same type (let’s say h2) on the page, and the first one has a link, the rest won’t show at all. After hours of playing with it, I discovered what to do to. I just need to have some tag inside the h2, for example:

    h2 span My title /span /h2

    (cannot use the tags, so just imagine them)

    And the “My title” will now be displayed. Didn’t find it in the bug list, but saw people talking about issues in FireFox. No problems in IE of this kind.

  18. gumbah says:

    Working great, but i have a question:

    I might be overlooking something, but is it also possible to increase the size of the h1 when transforming it to flash??

  19. Mark Wubben says:

    Not directly, you’ll have to change the decoy styles.

  20. Mark, I am sorry but I am about to break your hack to hide object tabs again. A web site just shouldn’t be able to temper with them. The proper solution: add an exception rule for the sIFR object to Adblock Plus (like “@@|http://novemberborn.net/_/swf/hoefler-8.swf|”). But that’s something the user has to decide for himself.

  21. Mark Wubben says:

    Hi Wladimir, thanks for dropping by. One could argue that sIFR should be able to control what extensions do with the DOM, in this case making sure that only the Flash movie is visible. But that, of course, is not the real point.

    The problem here are the object tabs, which are obscuring the text. Using them to block the Flash movies doesn’t help the user, as the JavaScript file needs to be blocked for sIFR to be effectively disabled. Whitelisting the movies gets annoying if it needs to be done repeatedly for different sites. Could we discuss a good way for Adblock and sIFR to work together, much like how FlashBlock hides the Flash movie and shows the alternate text?

  22. Hi Mark,

    We’re using the 2.0.2 release on our site, but it still seems to be broken on IE6 for us (in fact it seems that most sifr sites don’t work on IE on our machine)

    Have you got any ideas what could be up?

    Thanks,

    VintagePretty

    P.s. IE is v6.0.2900.2180.xpspsp2gdr.050301-1519 according to help.about. It all works fine on FF1.5

    Also, in an unrelated point, the first couple of letters of each line on [http://novemberborn.net/sifr/eolas-patch-1] following the blockquote are invisible in IE, which makes it a bit awkward to read!

    Thanks again!

  23. Mark Wubben says:

    I can’t replicate this myself, so I’m afraid I’ll have to write that off as a Microsoft/IE issue, which is extremely hard to debug. However, could you look at the SWFObject demo to see if it works?

    By the way, I am getting JavaScript errors when looking at the page.

  24. marijn says:

    I found a bug with FireFox and wanted to share. If you have multiple sIFR object of the same type (let’s say h2) on the page, and the first one has a link, the rest won’t show at all. After hours of playing with it, I discovered what to do to. I just need to have some tag inside the h2, for example:

    u sir, are a genius!! h2 span /span /h2 (with the hooks ofc) was all it took to fix the bloody mess

    (the deadline is in 30 min and this was the last problem whe strugled with)

  25. Mark Wubben says:

    Marijn, could you clarify? The example didn’t exactly come through, and it sounds like a strange problem.

  26. Hi… What Up!?

    i have a question regarding your latest sIFR 2.0.5 in IE7…

    when all are set and fine i do noticed that in IE7 there are always something wrong about rendering the text to flash…

    what i mean is, instead of text… it always display Rendered in sIFR 2.0.5. ??? how come that in Firefox looks fine but in my IE7 it is not…

    any help about that or idea ? thanks by the way with this wonderful script…

  27. Mark Wubben says:

    Mark, that may be because of another script on your page. You should try with sIFR 3 instead.

  28. Danny_Joris says:

    Is there a sollution to hide the ‘block’ tabs? I’ve tried all the css sollutions I could find, but none of them worked. I’m using Adblock Plus 1.1.1 with Firefox 3.5.2. I really hope you and Wladimir can find a sollution for this, or at least some kind of agreement. I don’t know how sIFR can ever be transformed into an ‘Ad’, that’s why I don’t understand the difficulties of finding a sollution.

  29. nick says:

    In case any1 is wondering how to add wmode=transparent to sifr, in order to have layers on top of it…

    the guy who wrote it thought of everything:

    ……”, sHoverColor:”#CCCCCC”, nPaddingTop:0, nPaddingBottom:0, sWmode:”transparent”, sFlashVars:”wmode=transparent&textalign=ce……

  30. Mark Wubben says:

    Danny, nothing was ever worked out, unfortunately.

    Nick, feel free to ask your question at Stack Overflow.