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Simile Timeline plugin for WordPress

April 14th, 2008 · No Comments

A few weeks ago I tried installing the Simile Timeline plug in for WordPress. It worked well when using Firefox as the browser but I always got a blank pane where the timeline was supposed to appear when using IE7.

The thread at Freshlabs indicates that several users have seen this problem and a number of solutions were described. Unfortunately, none of the suggestions worked for me.

This weekend I finally took a look at the code and found the section that was causing the problem.
// use cool onload observer if prototype.js is installed
if(Event.observe){
Event.observe(window, "load", loadSimileTimeline);
Event.observe(window, "resize", resizeSimileTimeline);
}
// otherwise fall back to non-standard addEvent
else{
addEvent(window, "load", loadSimileTimeline);
addEvent(window, "resize", resizeSimileTimeline);
}

Even though my WordPress installation has prototype.js 1.5.1.2 installed, the line “Event.observe(window, “load”, loadSimileTimeline);” was generating the error.

Instead of adding a conditional on the user agent I decide to make the code always execute

addEvent(window, "load", loadSimileTimeline);
addEvent(window, "resize", resizeSimileTimeline);

Now the timeline display is working with each browser I have tested.

If anyone knows why the use of Event.observe is failing on IE7 please let me know.

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