23 September 2013, 16:02

Hi,

I have enabled the use of Photobucket and Flickr in our instance of Mahara.

Photobucket now does not work:

• slideshow doesn't work
• thumbnails don't work

Flickr still partially works. Thumbnails work, but the slideshow doesn't. The slideshow is great for optimizing space on a page.

I tried allowing them as allowable iFrames but only got Photobucket partially working (loaded every single image in an album! more than 200 images made the page sufffer the scroll of death).

Can anyone offer any suggestions/workarounds for getting the slideshow to work for Flicker and to actually get Photobucket working again?

Thanks in advance,
Teresa

23 September 2013, 22:55

Hello Teresa,

I had a quick look at the code for the slideshows for Flickr and Photobucket. They both don't use iframe code and thus won't work with the "Allowed iframe sources" functionality.

Can you please post the code / URLs you wanted to use? When I set up a Flickr gallery block, I needed an API key first and once I had that and used my flickr URL http://www.flickr.com//photos/4nitsirk/show/with/9817553223/ (awesome concert by the way ;-) ) it returned the message "The external URL you provided is not supported". Did you get the same for Flickr or something else?

It would be great to have some more details about the code / URLs you used, which browser you are using and also if your site runs on https or http (just in case as we've had an issue with https sites and mixed content that is being fixed).

Thank you

Kristina

25 September 2013, 14:35

Hi Kristina,

Our Mahara is https.

I have got both a Flickr and Photobucket API key and enabled those in Admin.

Workarounds:

• I have the Photobucket slideshow working - via allowable iframe sources and using the external media block.
• I can also now also display individual Photobucket images via the same method.
• I can now also dissplay the Flickr slideshow in via the same method of using allowable iframe sources.

I had to use this code for Flickr as part of the iFrame to get it to work:

<iframe src="http://www.flickr.com/photos/grafixgurl/sets/72157632178267703/show/" style="border:0px #FFFFFF none;" scrolling="no" frameborder="1" marginheight="0px" marginwidth="0px" width="640" height="359"></iframe>

This is one URL that I am using (and had worked previously as a slideshow): http://www.flickr.com/photos/grafixgurl/sets/72157632178267703/ 

I have tried the following (public) links from Photobucket:

• http://s1144.photobucket.com/user/DJCann/library/5%20Points%20Jazz%20Festival%202012
• http://s1144.photobucket.com/user/DJCann/slideshow/5%20Points%20Jazz%20Festival%202012
• http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z107/taytaydd/Summer-21350-1.jpg
• http://s1144.photobucket.com/user/DJCann/story/55
• <iframe src="http://s1144.photobucket.com/user/DJCann/story/55/embed" width="650" height="400" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
• <a href="http://s1144.photobucket.com/user/DJCann/story/55" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1144.photobucket.com/albums/o491/DJCann/story/55/thumb/large.png" border="0" alt="A Postal Love Story"/></a>

These are the settings that used to work for displaying a slideshow gallery (I tried adding in an 's' into the URL- hich works for Instagram in our Mahara)):

Tried in Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari (Windows) and Opera - all give back the same empty block in  the slideshow: 

The only thing that seems to work is the use of an iFrame for the slideshows.

Thanks,

Teresa

16 October 2013, 13:14

Hello Teresa,

The issue with the Flickr slideshow is that Firefox (and the other browsers as well I suspect) is blocking the content since you are on SSL. Check if you see the "shield" icon in your address bar. For more info, please see https://blog.mozilla.org/tanvi/2013/04/10/mixed-content-blocking-enabled-in-firefox-23/

I just tried to embed your slideshow with https: https://www.flickr.com/photos/grafixgurl/sets/72157632178267703/  and get to see your slideshow correctly. It also worked when I unblocked the page from the mixed content.

Cheers

Kristina

16 October 2013, 17:20

Hi Kristina,

Thanks for that - we just figured that out (very) late yesterday as well!

I think it's because we have a HTTPS Mahara, and Firefox doesn't like letting non-secure content being displayed via secured content.

The slideshows show in Safari on a Mac and Windows, and in IE9 on Windows, but not in Chrome in Windows or Mac.

Cheers,

Teresa

16 October 2013, 21:20

Hello Teresa,

I'm surprised that it works in IE because that has had the mixed content message for a while now. I always saw it on Moodle sites during training sessions. It's displayed much more prominently than in Firefox. But maybe you had already allowed mixed content in IE at some stage.

We made changes to some filters for the iframe code as we were seeing the issue there with YouTube and others starting to use src=//url.ext as a way of leaving it up to the browser to use the correct protocol depending on whether your site was running on http or https.

I filed a report at https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1240401 and maybe someone has an idea of what could be done.

Cheers

Kristina