What happened to the iFrame Widget?

This article looks to provide some answers as to why the iframe embed option for Widgets was left out of Searchie 2.0

There are a few reasons why we ultimately decided to move away from allowing widgets to be embedded using an iframe in Searchie 2.0. In this article, I will do my best to breakdown the three main reasons for the decision, but if you have any questions, objections, or concerns with our reasoning, feel free to reach out to our help team for a more personal discussion.

Improved User Experience (and Hubs)

Although you may have been lucky enough to have an audience that was willing to leave one page on your site in order to access the search widget, ideally this shouldn't be mandatory. By defaulting all widgets to the pop-out widget, your audience will have access to the search widget on any page you desire, without the need for them to navigate to another part of the site. To go along with this, if your widget was originally found at the bottom of a long page or tucked away on a page only accessible through a menu item, people in your audience will likely discover this amazing functionality for the first time as a result of the improved accessibility of the feature.

Another (secondary) way that we are hoping to improve your audience's experience is by leveraging Searchie Hubs in your business. Hubs have a much more advanced and robust search functionality that not only will find search terms inside of transcriptions, but also inside of chapter and file titles. Instead of linking your audience to a widget URL, send them to a public Hub with your content ready to view.

Ease of Setup

Now that we have essentially reduced the number of widget layout types available, this also makes it much easier to set up and configure your widget. We often found users reporting a feeling of overwhelm when trying to integrate Searchie into their website, so we removed some of the confusion and tried to light a clear path forward. Simply grab the embed code with a preset or custom button, and paste it into the HEAD of your page or website. Want a fancy button for activating the widget? Use the custom button type and add some styling to make it your own. Okay with one of our preset button locations as long as it's easy to set up? Choose your preset button location and away you go.

Privacy

The other main reason for this change is one that involves the security and privacy of your content. The embedded iframe widget was susceptible to "hacks" that would result in non-authorized users accessing widget content outside of the widget. This vulnerability could be curbed in a few different ways with the privacy options built into the widget configuration, but we ultimately made the decision to take the onus out of the user's hands by eliminating the vulnerability from the system entirely.