1 Topic by mf

  • mf
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  • From: Munich, Germany
  • Registered: 2013-01-06
  • Posts: 3

Topic: SimpleViewer problems with Smartphone

Dear SimpleViewer support team,

I am employing the SimpleViewer V2.3.1 on my recently with HTML and CSS developed homepage. Before uploading the page, I made extensive tests with IE, Google Chrome, Safari, and Mozilla Firefox. On all browsers it worked fine.

However, unfortunately the pages which employ the SimpleViewer, do not work on smartphones. (I tested with “Samsung Galaxy S3” and “Sony Xperia go”). It looks as follows: All pages show the entire pack of pictures in one big frame without thumbs with a huge vertical and horizontal offset. Besides the fact that it looks absolutely unpleasant and is not user-friendly since you will have to significantly scroll down and to the right until you find the above mentioned stack of pictures, you will then only be able to click on one of pictures once, resulting in an enlargement of this picture and a stall of the device with no further action possible.

Trying to find a solution I applied several other checks, e.g. with “W3C Markup Validation Service” which, unfortunately, did not reveal a relevant error regarding this issue.

Finally I could reproduce the error on the older notebook of my wife (Windows XP), which has installed Safari V5.03. The appearance was similar to the one on the smartphones. (Note: Javascript was enabled. If I disable Javascript, the SimpleViewer is not displayed at all.) On my notebook (Windows 7) with Safari version 5.1.7 it works perfectly.

I also saw the FAQ on your homepage, which might relate to the same issue: “Why can't I view my gallery on a 3G mobile connection?” Answer: “… 'Content Modification' by mobile networks not only breaks SimpleViewer, it breaks many websites that uses JavaScript. We are aware of this issue and are investigating possible solutions.”

To verify the issue, pls take a look on my homepage via a smartphone.

Hope you are able to help.

Thank you very much in advance and best regards,

Matthias

  • Felix
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  • Registered: 2006-03-16
  • Posts: 4,395

Re: SimpleViewer problems with Smartphone

Please provide a gallery URL so we can take a look.

Felix Turner
SimpleViewer Support Team.

Felix's Website

  • Felix
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  • Registered: 2006-03-16
  • Posts: 4,395

Re: SimpleViewer problems with Smartphone

Gallery URL: http://www.weimaraner-weilertor.de/imag … ldung.html

What you are seeing is the mobile version of SimpleViewer which has a different layout to the Flash version. Please check this FAQ question.

For some reason the mobile version is being misplaced further down the page than it should be. Possibly dues to the multiple

<h1>&nbsp;</h1>

tags in the code.

Felix Turner
SimpleViewer Support Team.

Felix's Website

4 Reply by mf

  • mf
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  • From: Munich, Germany
  • Registered: 2013-01-06
  • Posts: 3

Re: SimpleViewer problems with Smartphone

Dear Mr. Turner:

Thank you very much for your fast reply. Unfortunately I was not able to get back to you earlier, but it required some time for testing until I finally figured out the problem:

When using the non-flash version (useFlash=false) I must not employ the German Umlaute “ä, ö, ü” or the “ß” within the “gallery.xml” file (neither in the title nor in any picture caption), otherwise the picture-grid will not be displayed at all. After eliminating all Umlaute the grid gets displayed in the non-flash version and also you will be able to access it from a smartphone. (This is not an issue when the useFlash parameter is set to “true”). Unfortunately a conversion of those letters into html-code, e.g. “ü” = “&uuml;” does not solve the problem.

Regarding your comment on the employment of the “<h1>&nbsp;</h1>”, I realized something else: When using the code as produced with the sv-builder, a.i.

simpleviewer.ready(function ()
{simpleviewer.load('sv-container', '820', '580', 'C8B5A7', true, flashvars);
        });
        </script>
        <div id="sv-container"></div>

I encounter the following problems:

a) in the flash-version (useFlash=true) the surrounding frame is not pushed to the bottom, hence I used the work-around with the “<h1>&nbsp;</h1>”, and

b) in the non-flash-version (useFlash=false) the picture of the simpleviewer is pushed to the right and to the bottom.

However, when I replace the text “sv-container” with any kind of text, e.g. “dummy” I do not need the above mentioned work-around and the flash-version as well as the non-flash-version is displayed correctly. I have no idea why, but it works. (see w/o workaround but "dummy" instead of "sv-container": http://www.weimaraner-kurzhaar.de/ausbildung.html and with workaround  http://www.weimaraner-kurzhaar.de/junghund.html)

So, the second issue is sort of solved (even if not understood), but it would be great, if you had a solution for the Umlaut-problem.

Thank you very much and best regards,

Matthias

  • Registered: 2008-07-06
  • Posts: 6,330

Re: SimpleViewer problems with Smartphone

When using the non-flash version (useFlash=false) I must not employ the German Umlaute “ä, ö, ü” or the “ß” within the “gallery.xml” file (neither in the title nor in any picture caption), otherwise the picture-grid will not be displayed at all.

As the image filenames form part of a URL when uploaded to your web server, make sure that the filenames use only web-safe characters.
Please see section 2.3 of this document for details: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt

Characters that are allowed in a URI but do not have a reserved purpose are called unreserved. These include uppercase and lowercase letters, decimal digits, hyphen, period, underscore, and tilde.

However, you can use non-English characters in captions (in both the Flash and Mobile players). Please see this FAQ for details: Non-English characters are not showing in the captions. Why?
If using svBuilder to create your gallery, you can directly enter a caption such as " German Umlaute “ä, ö, ü” or the “ß” ".

a) in the flash-version (useFlash=true) the surrounding frame is not pushed to the bottom

When adding elements to a web page, they are, by default, stacked from top to bottom (not bottom to top).

b) in the non-flash-version (useFlash=false) the picture of the simpleviewer is pushed to the right and to the bottom.

In the Flash player, the SimpleViewer badge/link logo is offset a little (and is not positioned absolutely at the bottom-right corner of the gallery) due to the default value of '10' given to the stageBorder SimpleViewer-Pro configuration option (which cannot be changed using SimpleViewer-Standard).

However, when I replace the text “sv-container” with any kind of text, e.g. “dummy” I do not need the above mentioned work-around and the flash-version as well as the non-flash-version is displayed correctly.

It should not matter what name you give to the gallery container <div>. There may may other factors involved which are responsible for the problem that you experience. The two links you provided display different galleries (one of which contains an XML parsing error in its 'gallery.xml' file) and there are errors on your HTML pages which should be fixed.
You can check your code with the W3C Markup Validation Service and fix the errors reported.
To test your hypothesis that the name of the gallery container makes a difference in the layout of your page, try viewing two pages whose code is identical (and validates correctly) in all aspects (including displaying the same gallery) other than the name of the gallery container.

Steven Speirs
SimpleViewer Support Team

6 Reply by mf

  • mf
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  • From: Munich, Germany
  • Registered: 2013-01-06
  • Posts: 3

Re: SimpleViewer problems with Smartphone

Dear Mr. Speirs,

thanks you for your support. Using UTF-8 code and employing the relevant characters in the gallery.xml file, crated via the sv-builder as you suggested, helped solving the problem. The homepage is now displayed correctly with and w/o flashplayer, hence also on smartphones.

Also the other items are solved. As you rightfully said, it does not matter which name I use for "sv-container" (during my debugging and testing sessions I defined an "sv-container" id, which created the offset ... and which I unfortunately forgot to delete again ...).

Great tool, great support.

Thanks,

Matthias Funk