Zen Lightbox addon [Support Thread]

Hey Woody!
No, I've read too much troubling stuff about IH2 to even really look at it since I love the functionality of Lightbox.

As I said, I've got things working and easy enough procedure for future additional pictures but just seemed odd to me. Any thoughts appreciate but don't waste too much energy on this one.

Your issues clearing up? I'm to the point where even the IE6 format issues are down to the "that's enough work, update your browser!" stage. Hope it's the same on your end.

Jeff

Aumz:

Does having IH2 cause lightbox not to work.

I have IH2 and Lightbox running well together. You may need to install some patches previously quoted in this thread (since release of last version half year ago), if certain functionality misbehaves (e.g. display additional images). I understand Alex is still working on an update. Hoping he'll consider putting out a "patch release" without any new features. Then the new features can wait for later.

Also I previously posted I had one Firefox client having trouble with Lightbox. I've since discovered the same client has similar issue with other Lightbox type functionailty on other websites. So it very likely a Firefox profile issue (about:config), nothing to do with the Lightbox mod.

Woody

Hey!,
So is the _LRG.jpg issue not correct? Should it "create" the larger version of the additional pictures from main image folder as well?

no lightbox doesn't "create" the large image itself it looks to the directory of the large images......

Thanks.

Weird. Wonder how it does it for the primary without an accompanying image in the large folder?

Jeffey:

Hey!,
So is the _LRG.jpg issue not correct? Should it "create" the larger version of the additional pictures from main image folder as well?
Lightbox does not "create" any images. It uses what you have configured for large images in Admin > Configuration > Images. That is the exact same image normally displayed when you click the "larger image" below the product image on the product description page.

The higher quality larger size image is generally uploaded to the /images/large directory and appended with the _LRG at the end of the filename. Again the prefix is determined in Admin > Configuration > Images

But I don't have to think about these details as ImageHandler2 does all that thinking for me!

Woody

Jeffey:

Thanks.

Weird. Wonder how it does it for the primary without an accompanying image in the large folder?

In that case then it scales up the lower sized image. But this is not good. You should upload three differently scaled/optimized images.

Or use ImageHandler2 which does the resizing and resampling on the fly, so you only have to upload one image (best if large image) and don't need to apppend the filename.

Woody

I see!

Just what I need, more toys! Guess I'll have to look into it. Scared about all the horror stories of it breaking Lightbox though.

I'll work it offline on my copy to see how it goes since everything is working and a little of the heat is off....but not much!

Another unplanned day of Zen! Can't walk away from the damn thing and one issue sprouts to another....and another........

Thanks as always Woody and thanks to everyone else too!

OK, total noob to zen cart needs help.

I jumped in to help a friend on their site and while getting more familiar with zen cart, found this contribution, thought it would be a great fit.

Downloaded, renamed the folders, uploaded to server, seemed easy.

No luck, images still pop up in a new window.

At this point, don't know a great deal about the zen cart install. Also, reading this looong thread is not much help as a lot of it is greek to me.

Any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

http://www.pdplay.com/

I go to your site but where are you trying to get this to work, I don't seem to see your cart...not that I looked much but if you could provide a link to the cart, it might be better.

Thanks for your reply.

The site is using zen cart to display their catalog of products, not as an actual shopping cart. Here's a link to one of the product display pages that has a link to a larger image.

http://www.pdplay.com/atlantis.html

I think that is your problem, thats not a zen cart link right there. A link to a product would look more like index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=2 something like that. That page you put up is an html page...so if you want that page to have lightbox then you need to work that from the original lightbox code. You can google it to find it. You can also tie in the links to html pages to the files in the module for lightbox, it takes some hacking of the code but not to hard. That is not a zen cart link...sorry and good luck

Thanks for the reply, but that is a zen cart link. All of the individual product pages (.html) are generated on the fly by zen cart.

I did not do the initial installation for this site, so I'm not sure how this is accomplished, but it is no different than another zen cart website that was shown as a working sample earlier in this thread:

http://rafcamera.com/

If I'm not mistaken, the product links on that website are also dynamically generated html pages, here's a sample:

http://rafcamera.com/novar-anastigmat-lens-3575cm-p-566.html

This great lightbox contrib is working on that website.

CrystalKoi:

I think that is your problem, thats not a zen cart link right there. A link to a product would look more like index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=2 something like that. That page you put up is an html page...so if you want that page to have lightbox then you need to work that from the original lightbox code. You can google it to find it. You can also tie in the links to html pages to the files in the module for lightbox, it takes some hacking of the code but not to hard. That is not a zen cart link...sorry and good luck

@Crystal: Look at the source. Looks like Zen Cart to me :wink2:

I think they are just remapping using SEO URL's and substituting html instead of php extension (hides the language used to output the html).

@Izon: Just a hunch but maybe some other JavaScript you are loading is conflicting? Maybe temporarily disable the other scripts to test.

That is a nice looking highly customized site. If you can I suggest communicating with the original developer for ideas.

Woody

Woodymon:

@Izon: Just a hunch but maybe some other JavaScript you are loading is conflicting? Maybe temporarily disable the other scripts to test.

The other two loaded scripts:

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/kuzmenu.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/rollovers.js"></script

I'm not familiar with kuzmenu.

See here:
http://pdplay.com/pint-size_play_rsm-1.html

You have a mouseover enabled on the additional image (the drawing thrumbnail) which maybe conflicting with Lightbox function. Disable the mouseover on that image to test for conflict. (easiest to test by temporarily disabling rollover script).

Woody

Woody,

Thanks for your efforts. I wish I could go back to the original developers but that's not an option. I'm not familiar with kuzmenu either and could not find anything online.

I guess it could be a javascript conflict, but I would expect to see some sort of error message.

The other reason I question this is that, when I look at the source code, for the image popup, I see

  <a href="images/RSM-1-7501.jpg" target="_blank">(Larger image)</a> 

I would expect to see something similar to this

<!-- begin lightbox v1.1 aclarke 2006-09-06 -->
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"><!--
document.write('<a href="images/scl/novar-75mm.jpg?zenid=e12b280870a919e950bf31c29c2152e6" rel="lightbox[gallery]" title="Novar Anastigmat lens 3.5/7.5cm"><img src="images/scl/novar-75mm.jpg" alt="Novar Anastigmat lens 3.5/7.5cm" title=" Novar Anastigmat lens 3.5/7.5cm " width="133" height="120" /><br /><span class="imgLink">larger image</span></a>');
//--></script>
<!-- end lightbox v1.1 aclarke 2006-09-06 -->

which is from the source of a working installation.

If it were a javascript conflict, wouldn't the code still get output correctly to the browser, then probably throw an error?

Given the above, I would think there is some problem with my install?

Again, I really appreciate your time and effort.

izonmedia:

If it were a javascript conflict, wouldn't the code still get output correctly to the browser, then probably throw an error? Given the above, I would think there is some problem with my install?

Just tossing out ideas:

I would still temporarily disable the rollover and kazmenu one at a time to see if there is any conflict.

And you sure you have:

Correctly edited Zen Cart core files to include Lightbox code:
includes/templates/classic/templates/tpl_modules_main_product_image.php
and
includes/modules/classic/additional_images.php

And uploaded
includes/modules/pages/product_info/jscript_lightbox.php
includes/templates/template_default/jscript/lightbox_effects.js

And uploaded the lightbox gifs to
includes/templates/template_default/images/lightbox/

To test maybe temporarily remove:
includes/functions/extra_functions/zen_image_lightbox_IH2_url.php

Is there a compatibility issue with SEO URL's? Since I have not employed SEO URL's I cannot help. Hopefully someone whom has both Lightbox and SEO URL's installed can post to confirm they work together. Or maybe some SEO URL mod hints in this thread?

Good luck,
Woody

Woodymon:

Just tossing out ideas:

And you sure you have:

Correctly edited Zen Cart core files to include Lightbox code:
includes/templates/classic/templates/tpl_modules_main_product_image.php
and
includes/modules/classic/additional_images.php

This sounds like the meat of the problem. I have not edited these files.

When I downloaded the contribution and decompressed it, I found a readme.txt file with 3 simple instructions, none of which mentions editing these files. Did I miss other instructions in this download?

I'll try looking back through this thread and see if I can find those instructions.

Thanks again for your help.

Feeling like an idiot here:

What core files need to be edited to include lightbox code?

izonmedia:

This sounds like the meat of the problem. I have not edited these files. When I downloaded the contribution and decompressed it, I found a readme.txt file with 3 simple instructions, none of which mentions editing these files. .

You are correct. The readme is over simplified and does not include the code snippets which were merged into the core Zen Cart files provided in the mod package. (Unfortunately the developer assumes you will on your own compare the provided files with your installed versions. But many new to Zen Cart just blindly upload. This is why it is is best practice for developers to document such code snippets in the mod readme...but some mod developers are in just too much of a rush or just forget or just don't care).

At any rate this mod works with Zen Cart 1.37 but it has NOT been updated for Zen cart 1.37. Compare with the ZC 1.37 core files and you will observe differences in ZC 1.37 version of /includes/modules/additional_images.php that do not show up in the mod version of the same file.

Note the Lightbox 1.3 mod was last updated over six months ago, well before the release of ZC 1.37. Hopefully Alex will take this in consideration with next update.

So I just compared the two core ZC files provided in the Zen Lightbox 1.3 mod distribution with the Zen Cart 1.37 version core files.

My findings:

(1) \includes\templates\YOUR-TEMPLATE-FOLDER\templates\tpl_modules_main_product_image.php
in the mod package is still current with ZC 1.37

 * @version $Id: tpl_modules_main_product_image.php 3208 2006-03-19 16:48:57Z birdbrain $

(2) But I cannot say the same for:
\includes\modules\YOUR-TEMPLATE-FOLDER\additional_images.php

Latest Zen Cart 1.37 version:

 * @version $Id: additional_images.php 5369 2006-12-23 10:55:52Z drbyte $

Older IH2 version in Zen Lightbox:

 * @version $Id: additional_images.php,v 1.3 2006/05/01 12:20:31 tim Exp $

(keep in mind that cboylan integrated code from the last version of ImageHandler 2 into the Lightbox version of the file. Last version of IH2 was released in the early days of ZC 1.3x and the IH2 mod is no longer developed by the author).

Comparing this file I noted one specific line is for Lightbox and all the other changes are for IH2.

In the latest ZC 1.37 version of the file multiple instances of the ereg_replace() function has been replaced by str_replace() function.

For example, the following:

  $products_image_base = ereg_replace($products_image_extension . '$', '', $products_image);

Was changed in Zen Cart 1.37 to :

  $products_image_base = str_replace($products_image_extension, '', $products_image);

If you want to understand why see:
See http://us2.php.net/ereg_replace
http://us2.php.net/str_replace

So for this specific file if you don't use IH2 (and it appears you don't) it might be best to just open a copy of the default ZC 1.37 core version (if you have no other edits) and edit the one line difference yourself and then upload.

For the future I think it best if the lightbox mod was released in two separate versions, one for base Zen Cart and another for IH2 (just include alternative files in the same package but in different option directories, and also document the different code snippets in readme).

Also I am uncertain if non-IH2 users need to upload
includes/functions/extra_functions/zen_image_lightbox_IH2_url.php
It appears it is only needed for IH2 installs but I myself use IH2 so I have file uploaded.

I suspect some of this stuff may have been previously documented further back in this thread. Search on cboylan for more info.

As a reminder for all...

I'm not saying that uploading those files is your current issue (and it is likely not) but any time you install a mod you should not overwrite core files or upload overrides, without first checking if those files provided in the mod match your Zen Cart version. That applies to Lightbox also.

And before overwriting you should check to see if you will be overwriting files you have previously edited/customized.

Install a compare/merge tool (e.g. WinMerge or BeyondCompare) to compare the mod files with the Zen Cart core versions and also compare with the back ups of your versions (before you uploaded the mod versions).

Woody