Fun with Sidebar Tabs
Fun with sidebar tabs is a WordPress plugin that adds a tabbed widget sidebar to your theme.
What it does
The plugin adds a new widget sidebar that shows one widget at a time via a mini-tab system.
Wordpress Versions
It has been tested on Wordpress 2.3-2.3.3 and 2.5 with the default theme and several of my own themes.
Usage
Unzip the folder to your plugins directory and activate as usual.
Go to the widgets page, under Presentation. Here you will find an option to choose how many tabbed sidebars you want. Selecting 3 will create three Tabbed Sidebar Widgets that can be added to your main dynamic sidebar. You can then add other widgets to those three Tabbed Sidebars as you would any other sidebar.
You can also use the following template tag in your theme files, if you don’t specify which number tabbed sidebar you want it will assume you want the first:
<?php the_tabbed_sidebar( int ); ?>
Versions
Version 0.4
Changed from Prototype to JQuery due to quicker loading times and conflicts with other plugins.
Added function to handle more tabs than the width of the box can cope with.
Fades in and out on tab change.
Version 0.3.1-0.3.2
Corrected a bug in the theme tag which would stop the sidebar appearing for users not using widgets.
Version 0.3
Altered the Javascript so that without it a normal sidebar appears. This does mean though that a blog with lots of Javascript or slow loading things at the end like Google Analytics can delay the execution of the script, in this case you will see the full sidebar content and this will then change into the tabs.
Added the option to style various parts of the CSS for each sidebar through the widget control.
Version 0.2.1-0.2.4
Error corrections for PHP 4.
Version 0.2
Fixed the Opera problem (and hopefully the Safari problem as well but I couldn’t test it);
Added support for multiple tabbed sidebars
Corrected the top margin problem, and added comments to the CSS file to help users make changes if their theme requires more space stil.
Update: It has occurred to me that there may be some unanticipated changes when upgrading from a previous version.
If you used a previous version you will need to set it up again as new, because the sidebars are now numbered, meaning the settings of which widgets you had in the old, non-numbered, sidebar won’t carry across.
To cope with multiple sidebars the CSS has also changed to used classes instead of IDs. If you have intentionally overridden any of the CSS then you may need to rethink it. It also means that, for complex sidebars with lots of nested lists, the styles are more likely to be compromised by CSS in your theme style sheet.
Version 0.1.2
Corrected a missing closing tag in the HTML.
Version 0.1.3
Subversion problems, no changes.
Version 0.1.2
Corrected a folder-name problem that meant the version downloaded from WordPress didn’t work.
Version 0.1.1
Added a widget so that the sidebar can be added to the main dynamic sidebar without the theme tag. Be careful, If you use the theme tag, and then (presumably accidentally) add the Tabbed Sidebar Widget, to the Tabbed Sidebar itself then you will destroy the Universe.
How to
Known Problems
It has been tested successfully on IE6, IE7, Opera 9.25 and Firefox. The current version runs into problems calculating the width on Safari.
Other problems are likely the result of differences in the CSS used by various themes.
Download From WordPress Extend
Visit WordPress to download the plugin
Comments
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1
A Vine (http://mizzou-jujitsu.net/Oahu/) commented at 4:53 pm, 9th 12 2007:
Hey, love the idea! But I can;t put anything else in the sidebar above or below it. For example, If I wanted a random quote just above the mini-tabbed widget, and a calander below it, how would do this?
2
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 5:46 pm, 9th 12 2007:
What I did when I was testing it was to put it above the rest of the sidebar, so there were two dynamic sidebars; however, you raise a good point.
I will add a widget so that it can be added as a widget in an existing widgetised sidebar.
3
Martin commented at 7:22 pm, 17th 12 2007:
Good idea for a plugin. I also like A Vine’s ideas as well.
Will be keeping an eye on this plugin future wise.
4
Bryan commented at 8:49 am, 19th 12 2007:
Completely awesome idea for a plugin!
However, it’s not working for me. I dropped the “Tabbed Sidebar” widget into one of my existing sidebars. And then added two RSS widgets into the Tabbed Sidebar’s drop area. But when I check my site, the RSS feeds just display together one on top of the other, no tabs, no nothing. Thoughts?
5
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 9:37 am, 19th 12 2007:
Bryan,
I suspect that it may be a CSS issue can you let me nkow some more details. If you want to e-mail them directly to me you can send them to me at mail@arickmann.co.uk.
1. What theme are you using? (if you are using a test site does it does it have the same problem with the deault theme)
2. What browser are you using? If you have more than one did you get the same result with other browsers.
I know there is a problem with Opera that I need to resolve.
Andrew
6
DewDrop (http://www.dewdropwebs.com/WPtest/) commented at 5:21 pm, 19th 12 2007:
Hi,
I’ve installed the plugin but am having trouble with it. First, I only put widgets in the Tabbed Sidebar box and didn’t know you had to also drag the Tabbed Sidebar widget into an existing sidebar. Just something you might want to put in the readme.
But there are still no tabs, just the usual layout. I’ve tried this on various themes, and in IEv6 and Firefox on the PC, as well as Safai on the Mac. None show any tabs.
Help please? And if it works, I’ll love it!
PS, the url I gave is to my test WP site.
7
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 6:45 pm, 19th 12 2007:
Brian, DewDrop,
I have taken a look at the site and realised why it isn’t working.
The folder name I used had underscores but the folder created by WordPress Extend had dashes.
You have two options, the first is to download the updated version (0.1.2), or you can simply rename the plugin folder from:
fun_with_sidebar_tabs
to
fun-with-sidebar-tabs
This is a school-boy error on my part. Sorry guys.
8
DewDrop (http://www.dewdropwebs.com/WPtest/) commented at 6:48 pm, 19th 12 2007:
I have downloaded and installed the new version, and made sure it had the dashes instead of underscores, but still no tabs. Any ideas?
PS: I did a “view source” and saw that the plugin links in the page header have the underscores. So I tried changing it back to underscores and it made the sidebar follow the theme’s CSS, but still no tabs. Maybe there’s a mixture of dash names and underscore names, such that only part of the plugin will ever work?
PPS: I think I’m getting somewhere now! I went thru fun_with_sidebar_tabs.php and replaced all instances of _ with - and now I’ve got tabs. There’s some styling issues but I can deal with that.
9
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 7:43 pm, 19th 12 2007:
I’m glad you have it working. Unfortunately I have rather made a hash of updating the repository; folders kept disappearing for no apparent reason.
The most up to version seems to be pointing to all the right places now though.
10
Bryan commented at 10:28 pm, 19th 12 2007:
Excellent, it’s working perfectly now!
A suggestion for future updates… the ability to use more than one!
11
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 11:14 pm, 19th 12 2007:
That’s great Bryan.
I will keep that in mind for the next update.
12
DewDrop (http://www.dewdropwebs.com/WPtest/) commented at 1:48 pm, 20th 12 2007:
One more little thing…
I noticed this wasn’t working right in Safari, and in testing for W3C validation I found out why:
In fun_with_sidebar_tabs.php on line 84, there’s a missing backslash in the “div” in “after_widget”. All the errors went away when I added that backslash.
13
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 6:27 pm, 20th 12 2007:
Thanks DewDrop, I can’t believe I didn’t see that.
14
Ajani Mgo (http://ajanimgo.com) commented at 10:48 am, 27th 12 2007:
Good day,
What I usually do when I have got a CSS problem, is that I insert the code manually, with some help from the “Executable PHP Widget”, which allows you to insert PHP Code into your widgets directly.
CSS problems mostly result in a line or two being “removed” from the top of the tabbed sidebar, making the tabs clash with other items around - with the PHP code widgets, you can always insert a linebreak or two using code, and the CSS problems will seem non-existent.
I would really love it if I could actually have more than one sidebar tab widget in action each time - it could allow me to categorize my sidebar content by widgets, and tab the specifics.
15
Regis commented at 4:42 pm, 27th 12 2007:
Hi.
I’m a beginner with wordpress. I have dowloaded your plugin. The installation is good. But now ? How can I manage the contents of my tabs ?
Thanks
16
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 5:27 pm, 27th 12 2007:
Ajani, If I understand you correctly you are saying that the problem you find is that the whole tabbed sidebar is too high up the page? If that is the case I do know what the problem is and I will address it in the next update.
I have been looking into the ways of adding more than one, and I will include that also.
Regis, The tabs are managed in the presentation section of the admin console, in the same way as a normal dynamic sidebar. The tab titles are the titles of the widgets that you drop into the sidebar. If the widget lets you change the display title then the name of the tab will change as well.
17
Ajani Mgo (http://ajanimgo.com) commented at 11:22 am, 29th 12 2007:
Yes, indeed - it is too high.
The simplest way I have found to solve the problem, is to just place the tag before the PHP code.
18
Sakoi Kai (http://kaiyosei.net/dean/) commented at 1:05 am, 31st 12 2007:
Hello,
I’ve just upgraded to version 0.2, and for some reason, the Tabbed Sidebar widget did not show up on the main dynamic sidebar… This could be due to the fact that I’m using WP 2.3.2. Either way, can you please look into this problem?
19
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 10:23 am, 31st 12 2007:
Due to multiple sidebar support the names of the sidebars are different (they all have a number now) so it seems likely that you will need to set it up again from scratch in the widgets page.
Did you get ‘Tabbed Sidebar 1′ in the list of widgets?
20
Sakoi Kai (http://kaiyosei.net/dean/) commented at 6:52 pm, 31st 12 2007:
I did not get ‘Tabbed Sidebar 1′ in the list of widgets.
I tried to completely delete the plugin and re-install it, but nothing changed from before.
21
Shane (http://sensetosave.com) commented at 11:17 pm, 31st 12 2007:
I am experiencing the same problem as Sakoi Kai - no widgets are appearing. Using wordpress version 2.3.2.
22
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 9:44 am, 1st 01 2008:
I have uploaded a new version that hopefully will address these problems. I still have not been able to replicate the problem on 2.3.2 so I am not sure what the cause is.
If this does not resolve it then I expect it is a conflict between another plugin. Shane, Sakoi, if you try the update and don’t find it fixed can you let me know, using the contact form, which plugins you are using and I will test against these.
23
Sakoi Kai (http://kaiyosei.net/dean/) commented at 3:01 am, 2nd 01 2008:
Thank you Andrew! It’s working now. =)
24
Louis (http://www.homebiz.bukiki.com) commented at 2:42 am, 11th 01 2008:
Hi Andrew, your plugin works great!
I want to put it on my header also, so i added “< ? php the_tabbed_sidebar(); ? >” in the header.php. (i put a space between the “?” and “php” coz the code didn’t show up in your comment box if i didn’t)
But it only shows an empty box with a border.
The one on the rightmost sidebar works well, but I can’t have the same thing on the header (above the”Most Popular Articles”). I added the one on the rightmost sidebar using the widgets tab on wordpress admin panel.
Any suggestions? Thank you
25
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 7:42 am, 11th 01 2008:
Louis,
You will only be able to display each sidebar once. If you have chosen to show two tabbed sidebars (in the widgets admin page) then you will need to amend one of the functions in your theme to:
the_tabbed_sidebar(2);
This will show the second one.
26
Louis (http://www.homebiz.bukiki.com) commented at 2:58 am, 12th 01 2008:
Hi Andrew, i erased all the tabbed sidebar and only leaving the one on the header using < ? php the_tabbed_sidebar(1); ? >. Nothing shows up.
I also tried < ? php the_tabbed_sidebar(0); ? > and nothing happened too. Just an empty box.
I’ve checked the widgets admin page and the tabbed sidebar is filled with akismet, site statistics and random posts, so its not empty.
Do you have any other suggestions?
Thank you
27
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 3:36 am, 12th 01 2008:
I would suggest trying it without any value in it, and try it with 2. If those don’t work then I would suggest setting the number of sidebars to 3 in the widget screen, making sure that they are all empty, then deactivating and reactivating the plugin.
Failing that I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss to explain the problem.
28
Bernd (http://www.bernd-distler.net/wp/) commented at 12:44 pm, 12th 01 2008:
Hi!
Plugin seems not to work for me too with wordpress 2.3.2
The widget shows only the buttons for the included widgets but not the content. Within source-code of the output i can see the content
Could there be a problem with the included css?
29
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 5:16 pm, 12th 01 2008:
Bernd,
There are definitely CSS issues. There are a lot of CSS files loaded after it and they are overriding some of it.
It also looks like lightbox is triggering a javascript error and stopping the rest of the sidebar javascript from running.
The CSS issue may be resolved by editing the fun-with-sidebars plugin, and changing the line that reads:
add_action(”wp_head”, array(&$this,”add_css”) );
to
add_action(”wp_head”, array(&$this,”add_css”) , 10);
The Javascript one is the key though. I don’t know anything about lightbox so I don’t know why the error is occuring.
30
Bernd (http://www.bernd-distler.net/wp/) commented at 6:50 pm, 12th 01 2008:
Thank you for your help! I disabled lightbox and now your plugin works
But the box still looks “ugly”
31
Bernd (http://www.bernd-distler.net/wp/) commented at 8:06 pm, 12th 01 2008:
I used another theme now and it works with the default css from your plugin
Seems that “Clean And Mean 3.0″ is not compatible with the plugin
32
Louis (http://www.homebiz.bukiki.com) commented at 4:18 pm, 13th 01 2008:
Hi Andrew,
unfortunately they didn’t work..
but I found the plugin useful, anyway. I’ll still use it on the sidebar.
One more if I may ask. Is there any other way I can add components to the tabbed sidebar except from the “widgets” admin panel? straight from the source code perhaps? coz the thing i want to display doesn’t exist in the “widgets” admin panel, so i can’t drag them into the tabbed sidebar.
thanks for your great response and support!
33
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 6:08 pm, 13th 01 2008:
Louis,
The only thing I can think of is to find a widget that will let you use PHP in it, and add that to the sidebar.
I did a quick google search and found this one:
http://www.blog.mediaprojekte.de/cms-systeme/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-widget-king-text/
There may be others.
34
Louis (http://www.homebiz.bukiki.com) commented at 4:01 am, 14th 01 2008:
Thanks, Andrew! I’ll try that one
35
Leanne (http://intricateart.com/blog/) commented at 4:42 pm, 16th 01 2008:
Hi Andrew,
This is a really great plugin - thank you for taking the time to develop it.
I have just a couple of suggestions for improvements, that I think would really launch your plugin.
1. The box is completely collapsed until the page loads, then it fills with content. I’m not sure the difference between your script and others (like on Problogger, whose tabbed box loads with content simultaneously), but that was a huge factor in whether or not I deployed the plugin on my blog.
2. The CSS factor - if you could add an options page that allows the user to manage the CSS (select colors, borders, etc.) that would REALLY be nice.
3. Compatibility - I didn’t have a problem with it on my designblog, however when I added the plugin to my blog, used a PHP exec plugin for sidebar plugins, it worked great in FF but completely broke in IE. I’ve got a feeling it may be related to the lightbox js, since that’s been mentioned and I also have that active.
I know of a lot of design clients and bloggers who would love to have this plugin since it is so easy to manage within widgets - just thought you’d like some ideas on how to make it much more desirable.
Thanks for your time!!
36
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 7:45 am, 17th 01 2008:
Thanks Leanne,
I will look at those when I do my next update.
37
Martin commented at 5:18 pm, 18th 01 2008:
Hi Andrew,
Ive been looking for something like this, but this may be a silly question.
Do you have to have a widgeted theme for this to work?
I did install it etc, but getting nothing showing up, or do I need to change all of the _ in sidebar.php to the -
Thanks
Martin
38
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 12:30 pm, 20th 01 2008:
Martin,
You don’t need a widgetised theme but you do need a version of WordPress that supports widgets.
If the theme isn’t widgetised you can use the theme tag noted in the page under usage.
39
Bierfles commented at 3:04 pm, 30th 01 2008:
Hi! Thanx for the plugin i like it
Is it really necessary to include the prototype.js? It’s about 122 Kb. Which is even more than my whole website.
I think that the CSS factor mentioned by Leanne is a good point. Changing the css/code now for, let’s say some Sliding Doors effect is such a pain.
40
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 4:58 pm, 30th 01 2008:
Bierfles,
Prototype is included with the plugin as I wanted to use version 1.6 and, until WordPress 2.5 is released, WordPress only ships with 1.5; however I have used it in a way that upgrades WordPress so any other plugins calling Prototype will not need to load the older version.
I have a few updates planned that will make Prototype even more important, and I will also be making it easier to change the CSS.
41
Emmett Jones (http://sportsbusinessdigest.com) commented at 9:15 am, 1st 02 2008:
Hi Andrew, this is a great plug-in, at least it seems like it…I cannot get it to work properly. I’m using Wordpress 2.2.2 and I’ve installed it, but everytime I go to the widgets screen to drag and drop, everything is frozen and I can’t pick up any of the widgets. I do see the “tabbed sidebar 1″ widget, but I can’t do anything with any of my widgets. The problem goes away if I deactivate the plugin. any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
42
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 7:33 am, 4th 02 2008:
Emmett,
Apologies for the lateness of this response.
I haven’t tested it on anything lower than 2.3; however, the most likely cause of a complete freeze is that the javascript is conflicting with another plugin.
If you are using firefox then I recommend checking the Error Console (under the tools menu) to see if there is a specific javascript error happening on that page. Make sure to clear the console and reload the page.
If an error appears in one of the other plugins with my plugin enabled, but doesn’t appear without my plugin enabled let me know and I will try and find out what is causing it.
43
TopBlogger (http://topblogger.pl) commented at 11:01 am, 4th 02 2008:
Thank you so much, I’ve seen it on many sites and have been wondering how they do it. Your great piece of work now leaves me with another problem: “what do I fill my sidebar with now that it looks so organized”
44
Emmett Jones (http://sportsbusinessdigest.com) commented at 12:51 am, 5th 02 2008:
Andrew,
I am getting a “too much recursion” error when I go to widgets page. The error console is highlighting this portion of the code
” return __method.apply(null, [this].concat($A(arguments)));”
which comes from this larger section
methodize: function() {
if (this._methodized) return this._methodized;
var __method = this;
return this._methodized = function() {
return __method.apply(null, [this].concat($A(arguments)));
No clue what any of that means, as my one programming class in college did not go over that well anyway, but I figured I’d pass the information along.
Thanks again
45
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 5:59 pm, 5th 02 2008:
Thanks Emmett. I notice you have found an alternative that is working well for you. That is good as I honestly have no idea why that error was happening for you.
46
Emmett Jones (http://sportsbusinessdigest.com) commented at 6:57 pm, 5th 02 2008:
Thanks for your help anyway, Andrew.
I wish you much success in the future.
47
Bierfles commented at 7:13 pm, 19th 02 2008:
I think i have found a bug in your plugin.
I use Custom Fields on my blog and normally when i add a custom field it’s been added on a fancy ajax way. (a fading yellow box appears within the custom field box)
But with your plugin enabled, when i add a custom field, my post is being saved. Also, normally when i publish the post, i get a new “create new post page” but with your plugin enabled, i the old post reappears.
When i look at the Error Console i get this error when your plugin is enabled:
Error: this.setOptions is not a function
Source File: /wp-includes/js/wp-ajax.js?ver=20070306
Line: 18
setOptions is a function within the WP prototype.js. but it is missing in your version of prototype.
Is there a way to fix this?
48
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 10:05 pm, 19th 02 2008:
Bierfles, you are absolutely right.
I have just uploaded a minor amendment that will prevent this error.
Thanks for tracking it down.
49
MindBlogger (http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/) commented at 6:26 am, 1st 03 2008:
Hey Andrew!
What an awesome plugin! Thank you.
Btw, I have a problem. In my sidebar, all the tabs seem to be broken down. They are not tabbed, and get displayed one below the other.
What could be the problem?
50
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 1:35 pm, 1st 03 2008:
Thanks MindBlogger,
If it is just the actual tabs that are doing that it is almost certainly because you have some specific CSS rules that are overriding the tabs.
The CSS specifity rules will be making those rules more important than the rules in the tabbed sidebar css.
51
Jeffro2pt0 (http://www.jeffro2pt0.com) commented at 10:34 am, 5th 03 2008:
Hey Andrew. I installed this plugin locally the other day but I couldn’t manage to figure out how to use it. I understand the installation instructions and I get as far as having a tabbed sidebar widget that I can place into a widget sidebar, but how do I add widgets to the tabbed sidebar widget. Hopefully, that makes sense.
52
Andrew (http://www.wp-fun.co.uk) commented at 12:11 pm, 5th 03 2008:
Jeffro, I think you have entered a time paradox of some kind
I will try to explain. I am assuming the theme you are using already has a Sidebar. I will refer to this as The Standard Sidebar.
When you install the plugin you should find that you have a sidebar called Tabbed Sidebar 1 in addition to The Standard Sidebar you had before.
You will also find you have a widget, also called Tabbed Sidebar 1.
You drag the Tabbed Sidebar 1 Widget into The Standard Sidebar.
This creates the tabbed section.
You then drag other widgets, for example a text widget, into the Tabbed Sidebar 1 Sidebar.
If you can’t do that, then something may not be operating properly.
53
erin (http://goodnessbadness.com/beta/) commented at 8:26 pm, 12th 03 2008:
i think i must be having the same problem as mindblogger. any suggestions on the best way to fix the CSS overriding issue? or, if you could take a look at the beta i’m working on you might be able to tell me if that’s not the problem at all. maybe it’s something else entirely! whatever it is, the tabs just aren’t… tabbing.
the tabbed sidebar also seems to be mangling the sidebars below it a bit. maybe i’m not meant to have a tabbed sidebar on my site!
thanks!
erin
54
erin (http://goodnessbadness.com/beta/) commented at 8:46 pm, 12th 03 2008:
i think i got it working and i have no idea how. i think it was removing the search widget from the tabbed sidebar widget. is that possible?
55
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 9:30 pm, 12th 03 2008:
Erin,
It could be possible. The main reasons are usually either a plugin is loading javascript that conflicts, or that the html tags are not closed properly. If your html isn’t valid then that is usually the best place to start.
56
Juan commented at 9:37 pm, 12th 03 2008:
Hello, many thanks for the plug….
This plugin wiht gtranslate crash when i change the language…
57
ck (http://www.jewlicious.com) commented at 7:11 am, 30th 03 2008:
I got it to work like a charm on Firefox but then I noticed that it doesn’t work on Explorer! Also, will this work on WP 2.5? I love your plugin but now what?
58
ck (http://www.jewlicious.com) commented at 9:16 am, 30th 03 2008:
For whatever it’s worth, in Firefox it works great using WP 2.5, but the same problems persist in IE7. Please help as this plugin rocks but I’ll have to go back to my very busy sidebar if I can’t get it to work in Explorer.
59
Andrew (http://www.wp-fun.co.uk) commented at 10:14 am, 30th 03 2008:
CK, I think the problem you are experiencing is a conflict with another plugin.
I can’t be sure exactly which plugin is causing the problem; however, I think the most likely candidate is Live Search Popup becuase this is loading an older version of prototype than my plugin requires.
I intend to rewrite this plugin using JQuery, so that might well solve the problem, but in the short team I would recommend turning off Live Search Popup to see if that resolves the problem. Then you can decide which is more important to you.
60
ck (http://www.jewlicious.com) commented at 2:43 pm, 30th 03 2008:
Andrew! Thanks for the rapid response. You were right. It was Live Search that interfered with your plugin in Explorer (but not Firefox where both lived in peace together, side by side). So I sadly had to let live search go because your plugin is more valuable to me. I will eagerly await the JQuery version.
61
Q Ball (http://oldschoolscholar.com/) commented at 8:24 pm, 4th 04 2008:
I love this plugin. It works great in IE7 and Firefox. I wonder how Opera and Safari users are doing with their browser views?
62
ck (http://www.jewlicious.com) commented at 4:33 am, 5th 04 2008:
Uh Oh. Updated to the fun-with-sidebar-tabs plug v. 0.4 from 0.3.2 using the automatic upgrade feature of WP 2.5 and the tabs disappeared leaving me instead with a long list of all the tabbed contents instead. Luckily I had an older version of the plugin on my Hard Drive so I uploaded that back and it works again. I’d like to use the JQuery version 0.4 - are there special instructions for upgrading that I may have missed?
63
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 5:34 am, 5th 04 2008:
CK, I can’t really diagnose the problem without the new version being installed; however, it will be a conflict with another plugin as it works successfully on every blog I have loaded it in to.
Jquery works differently to Prototype in the way it judges when a page is loaded. I don’t really know the details in full, but I do notice that the flickr picture loader never seems to stop loading. Perhaps that could be stopping the load event triggering.
64
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 5:42 am, 5th 04 2008:
Qball,
Thanks for the reminder. It seems there is a problem with Safari which I will need to get into. Everything else tests fine.
65
ck (http://www.jewlicious.com) commented at 7:01 am, 5th 04 2008:
ok i replaced the fickr tag, and turned off share this plug in, and turned it back on. Still no purty tabs…
66
ck (http://www.jewlicious.com) commented at 8:13 am, 5th 04 2008:
* sigh * Now for no apparent reason other than I turned off and turned back on again the sharethis plugin, the tabs now appear but only the first tab works.
67
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 9:33 am, 5th 04 2008:
CK,
I have been trying to find the problem on your site and I notice that wp-commentpreview is producing errors as it cannot find the files, i.e. WordPress is returning an html page where it expects to find javascript. This might not be the problem but I doubt it is helping.
68
ck (http://www.jewlicious.com) commented at 1:03 pm, 5th 04 2008:
wp-commentpreview is whacked. It doesn’t work. BUT if I turn it off, under my comments I see “Please note: Comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment.” AND comment subscriptions become invisible. If I turn wp-commentpreview on, then the comment moderation message disappears and comment subscriptions become visible again. In both cases, the tabs don’t work as they ought to.
*sigh*
Maybe it’s time to move on to another theme…
The good news is that with the new version of your plugin, all conflicts with Live Search Popup have disappeared. And that fade effect is very cool.
69
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 1:44 pm, 5th 04 2008:
CK,
I have solved the tabs problem. I think.
I am working on a fix at the moment and will explain more once I have resolved it.
70
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 2:43 pm, 5th 04 2008:
CK,
The problem was that another plugin was inserting HTML around the widgets that the tabbed sidebar doesn’t request. That was throwing off the Javascript in that it was looking for immediate descendants.
I have uploaded an amended version of the plugin that works differently to take this into account.
Let me know how it works out.
71
ck (http://www.jewlicious.com) commented at 3:21 pm, 5th 04 2008:
You programmers are like magic!
Worked like a charm, sweet, fadey, tabbed goodness. I’m still stuck with that wp-comments preview thing, but whatever, it’s all good. I can procrastinate on a theme redesign some more.
Though just for the record? The upgraded status of the plugin did not appear on my WP 2.5 page. Just so ya know.
Once again, thanks!
72
erin (http://squirrelofsnooze.com) commented at 1:11 am, 10th 04 2008:
now i really do have a problem! i finished setting up my blog, and everything looked great. then i changed the blog address through settings to redirect the blog to my root directory and the tabs stopped working. it looks pretty bad.
so then i tried setting the blog address back to mysite.com/wordpress and checked mysite.com/ and the tabbed box looked fine. should i just leave it like this even though the settings aren’t quite right? any idea why renaming the directory, or redirecting it to the root would cause this problem?
73
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 4:38 am, 10th 04 2008:
Erin, the plugin should use the WordPress address to try and find the files. If you changed that but didn’t move all the files to the new directory then it would stop working.
If you changed the WordPress address does that mean you have two copies of the WordPress files on your server?
p.s. I really like how you have used the tabs.
74
erin (http://squirrelofsnooze.com) commented at 5:13 pm, 10th 04 2008:
hey andy,
thank you! and i was trying to do what’s outlined on this page: http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory
75
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 5:23 pm, 10th 04 2008:
Erin, It seems to me as though the way it is at the moment is how it is supposed to be; i.e. the WordPress address should be http://example.com/wordpress, and the blog address http://example.com.
If that isn’t how it is then I am confused, but it works, so probably best leave it as it is.
76
GG commented at 10:09 am, 14th 04 2008:
I installed fun-with-sidebar-tabs, but had no fun :(. This plugin were conflict with sth. And now, “recent post” and “recent comments” are disappeared. In widgets, button “add” of “recent comments” are hide.
When I installed fun-with-sidebar, I configed recent comments into “tabbed sidebar” but wasn’t visible.
77
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 4:31 pm, 14th 04 2008:
GG,
I don’t understand exactly what you mean. Do you have a website address that I can see?
78
Webguard (http://www.webregard.de) commented at 9:59 pm, 20th 04 2008:
Hi, i did some error. I added a tabbed sidebar into another tabbed sidebar, so it did a loop –> fatal error on my Blogpage.
Okay, i deactivated the plugin and now i cant find all data in the SQL-Table to delete (which where from the Plugin). Can you tell me in which tables this plugin writes? Thanks
79
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 10:38 pm, 20th 04 2008:
Webguard, The information you want isn’t modified by the plugin but is part of the WordPress core.
WordPress records which plugins are used and in which sidebars, in a field called sidebars_widgets in the options table.
80
Chris (http://www.mobilitysite.com) commented at 3:56 am, 22nd 04 2008:
Hello. Great plugin. I appreciate the simplicity in setting it up.
The problem I am having is the same as some others. I am using ver 4.1 and wp 2.3+.
In IE 7 (and poss 6, but I dont have 6 anymore) it populates the info from widgets (I can see them until they load), but then blank. In Firefox it looks awesome.
Looking into the javascript error that IE is giving, it leads me to line 73 and in that line is this…
I am one for trying to figure things out and tried deactivating almost all the plugs with no luck.
Any suggestions?
81
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 6:57 am, 22nd 04 2008:
Chris, It looks like the problem is that Jquery 1.1.4 doesn’t support the queueing methods I’ve used, but that Firefox is skating over the problem whereas IE7 is just giving up.
I am going to work on a longer term fix; however, in the meantime I think you should be able to resolve it by editing the script.js which is in the js directory of the plugin.
This change takes out the part that IE was stopping at so should work on 1.1.4. It still works on WP2.5 but I don’t have an earlier version to test it on right now.
Find the function called function fwst_display_tab, this should be around line 63 and it replace it to read:
function fwst_display_tab( eventObject ){
$(this).parents(’ul’).children(’li’).children(’h3′).removeClass(’selected’);
$(this).addClass(’selected’);
$(this).parents(’div.fw_tabs_tabdisplay’).children(’div’).fadeOut(’fast’).empty().append($(this).parents(’div.fw_tabs_tabdisplay’).find(’ul li h3.selected’).siblings(’div.tab-content’).clone(true));
$(this).parents(’div.fw_tabs_tabdisplay’).children(’div’).fadeIn(’fast’);
}
82
Chris (http://www.mobilitysite.com) commented at 8:25 am, 22nd 04 2008:
I tried that, no luck. It left all 4 widgets open stacked on top of each other.
83
Stephane (http://www.androinica.com) commented at 11:41 pm, 22nd 04 2008:
I’m trying to us this plugin, but nothing shows up in the box.
I’ve installed the plugin here: http://www.androinica.com
Any ideas on what I did wrong?
Thanks!
84
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 12:10 am, 23rd 04 2008:
Stephanie, There are a few reasons why it may not be working, chances are it is all of these that are problematic in some way,
First the plugin called yulmedia. I don’t know what this is but it is loading its own version of Jquery outside of the WordPress script process and so that could be conflicting with the version that comes with WordPress.
Secondly you should make sure you have the most up to date version of my plugin. I updated it this evening specifically for the versions 2.3.x of WordPress.
Finally I notice there are quite a large number of errors and some invalid tags shown when I try to validate your html. It is always a good idea to ensure the site code is valid before trying to diagnose any CSS problems as they may be code problems in disguise.
85
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 12:15 am, 23rd 04 2008:
Note: For reference, following Chris’s query I have updated the plugin. No-one should amend the plugin as I have suggested in comment 81. Andy
86
Webguard (http://www.webregard.de) commented at 2:16 pm, 23rd 04 2008:
Thank you for your response.
But i already deleted these fields.
So if i reactivate this plugin it will show me again this damn loop on my page… Is there another field which is used by this plugin?
PS: The subscribing is not working for me…
Greetings
87
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 6:03 pm, 23rd 04 2008:
Sorry Webguard. When it comes down to it my plugin is just another widget. It uses the default widget process in WordPress.
That field is where the information is stored.
88
mark (http://www.MeltedReelOnline.com) commented at 1:27 am, 25th 04 2008:
Hi Andy,
I absolutely love this concept — and the fact that you’ve widgetized it is fantastic!
But, on my site nothing appears in the tabs. It might have something to do with the tabs on the main page, but they don’t use Jquery. I also have the latest version (just downloaded it today).
Any suggestions? Sidebar too narrow? Overriding CSS?
89
Andrew (http://www.wp-fun.co.uk) commented at 6:01 am, 25th 04 2008:
Mark,
Your theme is loading another version of Jquery after the plugin files. I have seen this once before and the same error was occurring. I cannot say for sure if this was the cause, but it seems the most likely culprit.
90
mark (http://www.MeltedReelOnline.com) commented at 8:01 am, 25th 04 2008:
Andy,
Thanks for the tip — I had a suspicion.
Is there any way to get them to work in harmony? How do I find out what version of Jquery the rest of my part is calling?
91
Andrew (http://www.wp-fun.co.uk) commented at 8:51 am, 25th 04 2008:
Mark,
The best thing would be the check first if that is the problem. There is a line in the header that loads jquery version 1.2.2, and then a script block after that. If you can remove these temporarily to see if that resolves the problem then that would confirm the issue.
One solution might be to disable the parts of the plugin that use WordPress’s script loading system and manually insert the link to the script after the new version of Jquery is loaded. Unfortunately I wiped my hard drive this morning by mistake so I don’t have a copy of my plugin on hand to tell you what to do but I will look at it this evening and give you some options.
92
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 10:48 am, 26th 04 2008:
Mark,
If you want to try changing the loading order you need to edit the fun_with_sidebar_-tabs.php file to comment out the line:
add_action(”init”, array(&$this,”add_scripts”) , 1);
You then need to add the following as the last thing before the end of the head in the theme header.php file
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php bloginfo(’url’) ?>/wp-content/plugins/fun-with-sidebar-tabs/js/script-114.js"></script>
93
mark (http://www.MeltedReelOnline.com) commented at 8:22 am, 27th 04 2008:
Andy,
Thanks so much for helping me with this.
Your solution worked, but now I’m having the problem I see others have come across — where the tabs don’t appear in a tabbed box, but rather as widgets stacked on top of one another.
This seems very strange to me, since it rendered the tabbed box (albeit empty…) just fine before the code edit.
Any ideas?
94
K (http://www.knoizki.net) commented at 3:55 pm, 29th 04 2008:
Thanks for this widget, it looks cool and makes the sidebar shorter thus make room for extra sidebars depending on what theme you are using.
However, I am using Safari browser and it crashes several times on my end, what’s the solution?
So far, I loved it.
95
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 7:31 pm, 29th 04 2008:
Re: Mark. I discussed this with Matt and resolved the problem. It was a problem with the url pointing to the script, the plugin worked fine once that was resolved.
K, to be honest I don’t know. I have Safari for Windows and it has some problems, but it doesn’t crash at all. It seems unlikely that it is directly related to the plugin.
96
Jascha (http://www.jaschaephraim.com) commented at 8:02 am, 1st 05 2008:
Thanks for the plugin! I just wanted to point out that the widget wasn’t validating (in the default theme), so I wrapped the whole thing in a <li> and it validates and doesn’t break anything.
97
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 8:10 am, 1st 05 2008:
Thanks Jascha.
I guess that is down the default theme insisting that everything in the sidebar should be insude a list.
98
Nelson (http://www.flirt-wind.net/) commented at 4:54 am, 5th 05 2008:
What if I want to use the plugin in a page rather than in the sidebar?
99
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 9:54 am, 5th 05 2008:
Nelson, you can use the template tag. It is explained on the page above. The only drawback is that the styling options depend on the sidebar system so if you want to style it you will need to add it to the sidebar. save. alter your styles. save. then remove it from the sidebar.
100
Premier League (http://www.premierleaguenews.in) commented at 5:02 am, 7th 05 2008:
Hi,
it is an amazing thing
but it doesnt work on my site
err !! if i use default theme … sidebar tabs are working but not with the theme I am using.
i am not able to find any error.
with this theme i am using .. it shows each of the Tabs one after another like regular side bar ..
I have added Spam Blocked and Latest Headlines for tab. hv kept it ther for you to check.
help mee .. thank you
Regards
IPL News
101
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 6:06 am, 7th 05 2008:
IPL, the reason it isn’t working is that you have an opening style tag without a closing one. A lot of your links, meta tags and javascript content is inside this styleblock so it isn’t ever loading it.
Also, either the theme you are using or another plugin is loading an older version of Jquery than the one that coems. it is possible that this might interfere, once you have fixed the style issue.
102
angel (http://www.homemadewords.info) commented at 11:21 pm, 7th 05 2008:
I think you should use instead of because sometimes it doesn’t show the right url
103
Andy Stockton (http://www.thedaguerreotypist.com/tdg1/wordpress) commented at 3:17 am, 8th 05 2008:
I installed FWS in my DarkWater theme and got this fatal error: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 40961 bytes) in /home/beinghop/public_html/thedaguerreotypist/tdg1/wordpress/wp-admin/includes/widgets.php on line 211. I don’t really have time (or honestly the skill) to debug it right now, but I can’t figure out how to uninstall it. If you have a moment hints/pointers would be most appreciated. Thanks.
104
Andy Stockton (http://www.thedaguerreotypist.com/tdg1/wordpress) commented at 3:22 am, 8th 05 2008:
Whoops, never mind, I solved it. I like the idea of your plug-in, but will tackle it when I have more time. Thanks.
105
Premier League (http://www.premierleaguenews.in) commented at 4:48 am, 8th 05 2008:
Hey Andrew,
thank you, will try to tweak and play with wp
hope it works
for now i am disabling it, will try it over weekend
Cheers
IPL News
106
Andrew Rickmann (http://www.arickmann.co.uk) commented at 6:55 am, 12th 05 2008:
Angel,
I will make that change the next time I update the plugin.
Thanks.