Modal popups

Rails
1

I have searched high and low on this topic. I’ve tried a couple of
the plugins (DOM Popup kit came closer to helping me than anything).
I thought I was getting close, but my problem now is passing
parameters. Here’s what I’m trying to do:

I have a navigation bar with links on it. I want to popup some of
them, so I tried this:

<%= link_to “Case Notes”, {:text => ‘Case’}, :onclick => “test()” %>
|

I need to pass in that “Case” text. The Note controller evaluates
that param to decide if the note is an Event note or a Case note. But
I can’t access that param in the controller via Javascript.

Why is this so difficult?? Why isn’t something SIMPLE like this
available??

<%= link_to “Case Notes”,
{:controller => “note”,
:action => “editornew”,
:text => ‘Case’},
:popup => [‘Notes’, ‘width = 800, height = 550’, ‘resizable =
yes’, ‘scrollbars = yes’, ‘modal = true’] %>

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions on how I can get at those
parameters in the controller, or another popup suggestion entirely,
I’d be VERY appreciative. I’m so frustrated right now.

Thanks much! ~Ali

2

Hi Ali,

On Wed, 2009-04-01 at 16:52 -0700, Ali wrote:

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions on how I can get at those
parameters in the controller, or another popup suggestion entirely,
I’d be VERY appreciative. I’m so frustrated right now.

Have you considered a lightbox-style approach?

Best regards,
Bill

3

On Apr 2, 8:09 am, bill walton [email protected] wrote:

Hi Ali,

Have you considered a lightbox-style approach?

Best regards,
Bill

I had looked into that approach a little bit, but from what I’ve seen,
isn’t that mostly for housing image popups? I need my popup to act
just like a ROR form – create, update, etc. Can a lightbox approach
handle that, or is it more for display purposes?

Thank you!!

4

On Thu, 2009-04-02 at 08:47 -0700, Ali wrote:

just like a ROR form – create, update, etc. Can a lightbox approach
handle that, or is it more for display purposes?

I’m using Craig A.'s RedBox plugin. It’s a Ruby implementation of
Lightbox.

(http:://blog.craigambrose.com/articles/2006/08/16/redbox-a-rails-compatible-lightbox)

With Redbox, the ‘lightbox’ window can house anything; including forms.

A couple of things that tripped me up a little:

  1. The RedBox method is invoked via XHR, but it renders a
    straight .rhtml partial.

  2. You need to make sure the partial has a containing

    that’s got
    height and width styled (CSS) to fit within the RedBox window.
    Otherwise you’ll get a blank display where you expected content. I
    think the ‘difficulty’ related to non-image content is related to
    whether or not the dimensions of the ‘bounding box’ can be known or have
    to be calculated. Anyway, I’ve found RedBox to be a very useful tool.

    HTH,
    Bill

5

Try this link http://www.stickmanlabs.com/lightwindow/. I have used
lightwindow to display images.Hope it will work for you.In this you
can submit a form and display images,play video,etc.

6

script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ambroseplugins/redbox

try sudo script/plugin install
svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ambroseplugins/redbox
if that doesnt work.

if neither work, ill mail the files over to u.

like bill said, redbox is good to go. The styling/resizing is the
problem. In a way, thats good cos it forces you to dive into the code
and see whats going on so you can correct it.
Havent found a way to resize it for forms dynamically though (like the
Lightbox does for images). I just place is it rigidly by specifying
the x,y coordinates on the page.

If anyone’s got tips on tweaking redbox to resize for forms, it’d be
great!

7

Redbox looks like it might work because it utilizes link_to and
hopefully that means I can pass params. However, that link you
posted, Bill, isn’t allowing me to install the plugin. Don’t suppose
you have another means of obtaining the plugin files?

It’s only three files, correct? Maybe you could just email them to
me! lol