Shim Development

When developing my shim strategy I designed a number of shim modal dialogs that could be used for external links.

The first was the Facbook Shim, this was a shim that allowed the visitor to exit the website by clicking a link on the modal.

I further expanded this to ban all exits to external sites. The Facebook shim can still be used on pages that an exit is acceptable, i.e. those developed for friends/parish council etc.

Code reduction

The shims add extra code to the pages. It is possible to reduce this to two lines of code that make the inclusion on a page far simpler.

The Wikipedia Shim is an example.

An example of the Wikipedia Shim - 🔗 - prevents exit, displays the context of the link

While the two line shim is easy to add to a page it is not easy to edit.

An example of the regular shim - 🔗 - prevents exit but displays the URL.
The URL is or can be entered so that the shim can be converted to allow exit with a minor change to the calling syntax.

A third variation is the shim for history pages that may link to geneolocial website.

An example: Genealogical numbering systems - 🔗 - - Wikipedia - Explains the A, B ...... J1, K1, L1, L2 etc notation of the Villers-Parma System

Note - The history shim was using an id="anchor", this was in conflict with the original shim developed and could be being used on some pages. The original shim broke the code above - I have changed it to id="hanchor".