Bug 7908 – Links with anchors opened from a Netspace plugin reload the target frame

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: WONTFIX
• Component: Plug-ins

[Jérome Foucher]

I have a page with two frame side-by-side.

The left frame has text links to go to several anchors of the right frame.
Using an HTML text link like <a href="scan.html#_scan01" target="scanimg"> scrolls my right frame to the right anchor.

However, if from a Netspace plugin in the left frame, I call browser->geturl(instance, "scan.html#_scan01", "scanimg"), the whole right frame reloads and then scrolls to the anchor. This is not the right behavior and is altering my plugin's fonctionnalities.

TYI, the nightlies have the same wrong behavior.

[Mark Rowe (bdash)]

Jérome, are you able to provide a sample URL where we can see this incorrect behavior occurring so that we can confirm this is indeed a bug?

[Jérome Foucher]

First, you will need to download and install the plugin I've developed :
http://www.waaves.com/html/_downloads/plugin/Waaves30Plugin.dmg

Then, you can test this page :
http://www.waaves.com/plugin/W30/medical/Scan12bits/menu.html

The plugin makes a progressive decompression of the images. Only the visible images are decompressed and rendered.

So, when the page is loaded and the the visible images are completely decompressed, click on a thumbnail (let's say the fifth one) in the left frame. This should scroll the right frame down to the fifth image. But you'll notice that instead of just scrolling to the fifth image, Safari reloads the right frame completely and then scrolls to the proper image. This is very annoying in our case because the decompression of images can be a real CPU-intensive task (it's not for the images of this sample page, but for medical scans of 2400x1200 pixels, trust me, it is).

If you need further information, please do not hesitate to ask. I can't provide the source code of the plugin, because it uses a lot of private code.

[Mark Rowe (bdash)]

Thanks for the test case.  I can reproduce this behaviour in WebKit 418.8 and r15138, and it is obvious why it is undesirable.  I'm not familiar with how plugins interact with the browser -- what API function are you calling to scroll to the relevant place in the second frame?

[Jérome Foucher]

As said in my first post, I'm using the function :
browser->geturl(instance, "scan.html#_scan01", "scanimg");

"scanimg" is, of course, the name of the right frame of the HTML page.
Each image from the right frame has an anchor named "_scanXX" with XX the index of the image in the frame.

My plugin is based on Apple's sample-code one can find the in the Examples/WebKit/NetscapeMoviePlugin folder of the developer tools folder.

Thus the browser variable is obtained like that :
NPError NP_Initialize(NPNetscapeFuncs* browserFuncs)
{
    browser = browserFuncs;
    return NPERR_NO_ERROR;
}

"instance" is the plugin's instance variable obtained as a parameter of each NPP_ functions

geturl works fine as long as I don't use anchors.

Hope this helps.

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

See also: bug 13504.

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Mass closing plug-in bugs, as plug-in support has been removed from WebKit.

Please comment and/or reopen if this still affects WebKit in some way.