Private Browsing supported?

[Matt]

Hi,

I would like to use Events Calendar Plugin and eventually buy an add-on like Filter Bar. However, I noticed that the search on the events page and the filter bar doesn’t work in some cases when I use Safari web browser on Mac in private browsing mode (I tried some show case sites and also your demo website http://wpshindig.com/events/).

Is this a configuration issue of those pages, or is it a bug in the plugin?

[Geoff]

Hey Matt,

Great question! You are absolutely correct: Safari’s private browsing feature does indeed disable some basic functionality in Filter Bar.

This happens because Filter Bar is relies heavily on Javascript on form elements and private browsing tends to block a number of Javascript features in an attempt to be more secure. There are definitely going to be cases where private browsing prevents features on any website from properly functioning and this is a good example of it.

The best workaround for it is for the user to either disable private browsing when navigating the calendar, or configuring the private browsing settings to allow Javascript — both of which are dependent on the user rather than something that can be readily remedied on the plugin’s end of things.

Does this help answer your question? Please let me know.

Cheers!
Geoff

[Matt]

Hi Geoff,

this sounds very strange to me. I never heard that private browsing deactivates Javascript. Usually the issue is that private browsing doesn’t allow local storage, but modern browser like Safari and Chrome do allow this (see http://stackoverflow.com/a/22623958).

The issue seems also to occur in Safari 10 and on Safari mobile (iPad and iPhone), while Firefox 49 doesn’t have any issues in private browsing. Due to the fact that a high number of users have Apple devices, it is definitely not a solution to rely on users to change to non-private browsing.

Can you please investigate your code, or if you already know tell me the root cause of this? I need to know if this can be fixed or otherwise need to look for a different way of implementing.

[Matt]

One thing to add: I checked the site http://wpshindig.com/events/ for errors and can see the following error:

QuotaExceededError (DOM Exception 22): The quota has been exceeded. (setItem – filter-scripts.min.js.1:1610).
This is exactly where Filter Bar tries to store something: tribe_storage.setItem("tribe_events_filters_wrapper", "closed")

You should review the code and check for a solution, e.g. either use an option for local storage which Safari private browsing mode supports, or do a check whether storage is possible before trying to store something (and getting an exception).

[Geoff]

Hi Matt and thanks for following up!

I’m happy to open a ticket for our team to dig into this further.

I’m sorry I don’t have any additional information for you but definitely appreciate the heads up.

Thanks,
Geoff

[Geoff]

Hey Matt,

Digging into this a little more, I see we do have a ticket open in our system and this is a legit bug. I have bumped up the priority of that ticket and hope we can get that into an upcoming maintenance release soon.

For reference, here is another thread posted by a customer that includes a possible fix:

Hard Dependency on Local Storage Breaks Page in iOS Private Browsing

Thanks!
Geoff

[George]

Hello!

I wanted to inform you that we’ve just published a series of updates to our products that fixes a number of issues.

We’ve fixed the Private Browsing-related issues reported here.

Learn more about this release—version 4.3.3—in the official release notes here → https://theeventscalendar.com/maintenance-release-events-calendar-4-3-3-event-tickets-4-3-3-premium-plugins/

Thanks for your patience while we fixed this!
George

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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