Official Plugins

Introduction

Included in overLIB's official distribution (the one you can download here) is a number of official plugins. To use the features provided by these you have to include the plugin on your page. Read how to do that in Using Plugins. Once a plugin is included you can use the commands it provides. Here we list the official plugins and document how you can use them.

NOTE: If you attempt to use a command associated with a plugin before it is loaded, or included, you'll get an error message something similar to "XXXX is undefined", where XXXX is the command you're using.

Plugins - Popup behavior

Centerpopup Plugin

The purpose of this plugin module is to provide support that will allow an overLIB popup to be easily positioned in the middle (horizontal and vertical) of the browser window. In addition, there is a command that will allow the popup to be positioned an X/Y offset from the central position.

See the documentation Plugin - Centerpopup for a description of the commands included in this plugin.

Crossframe Plugin

This plugin provides support for Cross Frame popups, whether they are STICKY or not. In effect, the routines in this plugin take care of ensuring that the overDiv containing element is defined in the frame where the poup will appear and for defining the global variable fnRef defined in the core routine so that it points to the correct frame where the source plugin code is located, which ensures that when the "Close" link is moused over or clicked that the popup closes without error, in the case of a STICKY popup. There is only one command associated with this plugin and that is the FRAME command which is explained in the Command Reference. In previous versions of overlib, the code contained in this plugin was included in the core routine but was placed in a separate plugin since not that many people make use of this capability.

Exclusive Plugin

This plugin provides support for an Exclusive STICKY popup, which is one that can not be closed by accidentally mousing over a link that would trigger another popup until explicitly closed via its "Close" link.

Commands associatd with this plugin are described in the Plugin - Exclusive documentation.

Hide Form Plugin

The purpose of this plugin is to provide a means to prevent form SELECT boxes and other system controls (ActiveX, Flash content, etc) from obscuring popups in IE version 5.5 and higher and in Netscape 7. This plugin will not work in Netscape 4.x, for which it is explicitly disabled.

There are no formal commands associated with this plugin. An explanation of how it works is given in the Plugin - Hideform documentation.

Anchor Plugin

The purpose of this plugin is to enable the user to position a popup with respect to reference markers on a web page. Reference markers are positioned DIV elements with a valid ID, a named image, or an Anchor link, which can also be a normal hypertext link if it has a NAME and/or ID attribute specified too. In Netscape 4.x the NAME/ID values should be the same.

The commands in this plugin are fully described in the Plugin - Anchor documentation.

Follow Scroll Plugin

The purpose of this plugin is to position the popup so that it stays at its initial position within the browser window. The commands of this plugin will only be applied if the popup is STICKY, is not DRAGGABLE, and has either one of the RELX/RELY commands applied. These commands are explained in the Plugin - Followscroll documentation.

Shadow Plugin

The purpose of this plugin is to apply a shadow effect to a popup, in which the color and/or position relative to the popup can all be specified. The commands associated with this plugin are described in the Plugin - Shadow documentation.

Plugins - Popup Styling

CSSSTYLE Plugin

The purpose of this plugin is to enable the user to style an overLIB popup using inline style rules by means of CSSSTYLE parameters. This capability was originally contained in the main overLIB routine but was moved to this plugin with the introduction of the plugin capability for overLIB. No functionality has been lost.

It should be noted that Netscape 4.x has difficulty with styling that are applied by using inline style rules as done in this plugin. The same capability can be achieved using the CSSCLASS parameters with much less trouble in Netscape 4.x. The Plugin - Cssstyle documentation explains the commands associated with this plugin.

Plugins Miscellaneous

Debug Plugin

This plugin has just one command associated with it, and requires the user to make a call to a routine which displays information. It works best in version 5 or later browsers (except Opera 6), but will work in all browsers supported by overLIB. The purpose of this plugin is to allow the user to obtain information about internal variables of overLIB while it is actually working in order to assist in debugging situations where popups are not working as expected. To query variables within overLIB, just insert the following statement at the appropriate place within the overLIB code:

showProperties(variable_label, variable, ...)

where variable_label is how you want to call the variable that is going to be dislayed (a string) and variable is the actual variable to display (type is variable, depending on the variable).

More than one container can be showing at a time. Just supply the ID of this container (a string value) as the first argument in the call to showProperties, as in showProperties(containerID, variable_label, variable, ...). Note, the presence of this parameter is determined by checking how many parameters are supplied to the call. A normal call will have only an even number of parameters since they must occur in pairs as label, value... etc. An odd number of parameters signals the routine that the first parameter is the containerID.

See the Plugin - Debug page for more information.

Plugin - Setonoff

The purpose of this plugin is to provide a way to set commands which take no parameter values to either their ON and/or OFF state regardless of their current setting. This setting takes place after the command line has been completely parsed, which means the SETON/SETOFF comamnds take precedence.

See Plugin - Setonoff for more details.