Timeline Express Pro Modifications: Difference between revisions

Line 82:

==Fixing the Citations and References Link==

Ideally it would be great to have a modal popup dialogue that displays the Citations and References, which involves extracting the information from the postmeta table and displaying it in a popup. That's the easy part. Getting the data in the postmeta table to display properly was a problematic issue. The main issue stems from the fact there is HTML and ShortCode in postmeta table. It needs to be displayed as raw output from WordPress, not as text in a paragraph.

Here's some foreshadowing: A Popup window as the solution? As it turns out, no way. Why? Because every single popup Plugin seems to load all of its information with the current page. If there's a bunch of information to load, as there is with a timeline that has a lot of events and a lot of sources that reference hundreds of books and web sites, that will kill a pages performance. All of that information did not need to load until it was called upon.

As it turns out, a Lightbox was the solution. Yes, traditionally those plugins are for images or galleries of images. But some can do iFrames. The best one I found was Featherlight. It can be configured to host / load images, videos, HTML, and iFrames. Perfect!

== Using Headers to Transfer Information ==

The easy way to move information and access information between pages or the server and browser is to append data to the end of a URL: https://WhatEverWebSite/WhatEverPage.php?WhatEverVariable=1234567890 and access it with GET; But it is so ugly. Why not pass the information via Headers?

@@ Line 82: / Line 82: @@
 ==Fixing the Citations and References Link==
 Ideally it would be great to have a modal popup dialogue that displays the Citations and References, which involves extracting the information from the postmeta table and displaying it in a popup.  That's the easy part.  Getting the data in the postmeta table to display properly was a problematic issue.  The main issue stems from the fact there is HTML and ShortCode in postmeta table.  It needs to be displayed as raw output from WordPress, not as text in a paragraph.
+Here's some foreshadowing: A Popup window as the solution?  As it turns out, no way.  Why?  Because every single popup Plugin seems to load all of its information with the current page.  If there's a bunch of information to load, as there is with a timeline that has a lot of events and a lot of sources that reference hundreds of books and web sites, that will kill a pages performance.  All of that information did not need to load until it was called upon.
+As it turns out, a Lightbox was the solution.  Yes, traditionally those plugins are for images or galleries of images.  But some can do iFrames.  The best one I found was Featherlight.  It can be configured to host / load images, videos, HTML, and iFrames.  Perfect!
+== Using Headers to Transfer Information ==
+The easy way to move information and access information between pages or the server and browser is to append data to the end of a URL: https://WhatEverWebSite/WhatEverPage.php?WhatEverVariable=1234567890 and access it with GET;  But it is so ugly.  Why not pass the information via Headers?