Hi,
I have been using news feed tile (rss) and when clicking → news would open as modal. At the moment it seems that I’m not able to view any of my news.
Tested with chrome browser, tested with edge browser, tested also with mobile phone’s chrome browser. None of them opens news anymore as modal.
Anyone else seeing same issue? It still worked couple of days ago.
If it’s a public source, can you share the URL? I’m wondering if the feed changed.
Hi,
https://www.iltalehti.fi/rss/uutiset.xml
http://www.iltasanomat.fi/rss/uutiset.xml
https://feeds.yle.fi/uutiset/v1/majorHeadlines/YLE_UUTISET.rss
Console says:
“Refused to frame ‘https://www.is.fi/’ because an ancestor violates the following Content Security Policy directive: “frame-ancestors ‘self’”.”
That means the site (is.fi) is now blocking being embedded in other pages.
More and more sites have started doing that which is why the default action for the News Feed is set to ‘Open in Same Window’. 
You can edit the News Feed tile and just the action to either ‘Open in Same Window’ or ‘Open in New Window’ and the links should load again.
Yep they do work when opening new (or same) window. I’m really confused to notice that all of my three news feeds broke down at the same time. That’s weird but —yeah… possible.
This modal issue is one moth****cker. There would be tons of great webpages to use if only they would work as modal. As I am using browser in full screen mode it is stupid to open news to another webpage to view it.
I’m still looking for those floating back/forward buttons to my windows which stays over browser and can be used getting back to previous webpage. Then I wouldn’t mind to open webpages to same browser page.
Remind me which browser and/or device you’re using? Fully Kiosk has some options for opening new tabs where you can then press the back button on your device to ‘go back’ and close the tab and I believe you can choose to hide or show the tab bar.
Hi. I’m using Windows with Chrome browser.
I’m most likely spending time on something that can’t be fixed. I mean this modal issue is bugging me and I’m wondering if disabling modal use in webpages is starting to be more of a best practice. It means that at some point I’m going to probably lose weather and google calendar use as modal just like I lost my rss news feeds.
But…I’m still going to ask. Could there be a way to open hyperlink (from news feed tile) so that it opens completely new browser window? Now there seems to be possibility to choose “open is same window”, “open in new window” or “Modal”.
Isn’t that what the second option does? What did you want it to do differently?
No. It opens a new tab… which is kind of a new window but …not…
If I click Chrome icon from my Windows desktop with right mouse button and choose “new window”, then it opens completely new window.
That’s going to depend on the browser and how it handles opening new links. For example, Firefox offers a setting to open links in tabs vs windows:
If it’s unchecked as shown in my screenshot above, then it opens the link as a new window.
For full transparency, there are other fiddly ways we could force a hyperlink (or news feed link) to open in a new child window. I suspect this is a relatively unique request with a limited audience, but you are always welcome to create a feature request for it.
With most people using SharpTools on tablets / phones, this wouldn’t be applicable for them. And I’m generally hesitant to add another option to the hyperlink options as I think it would add complication with minimal value for the vast majority of people… especially when it really should be up to the browser how to handle the link… and browsers like Firefox provide a configuration setting.
Yep it most likely is for just for few of us. I’m still going to do a request of it. I have literally thought all the possible ways to achieve this but nothing seems to be good or even working solution. About tablet users…this could be alternative method for them to back previous web page. I’m guessing they are all swiping but so am I. I just have two windows pc’s and two touch screens. That swiping is just somehow stupid in full screen mode when reading news from news feed. All of our family members opens news from feed. They read it and they notice something interesting from that page and they keep clicking and reading. Then user have to back x 20 times to get home dashboard. When modal was working user could just easily click outside of the modal window and tadaa…back to dashboard.
Using Firefox (which has this configuration option) doesn’t work? Or using a extension for Chrome or other approach to force all links to open in a new window?
This would not apply to Android/iOS tablet users… any fiddly approaches to pop up a ‘window’ would not be supported in Android/iOS devices and they fallback to effectively just opening a new tab as they do now. (This is where something like Fully Kiosk browser is so beloved on Android devices as it provides a UI for this use case.) So it would only be for desktop users who don’t use a browser that supports opening links in a new tab or similar alternative… 
I suspect that’s more a limitation of the browser. With Firefox, when I had it configured to open links in a New Window, even if I had SharpTools full screen, the new window would open in a small view layered on top of things, so it was easy to close (video below).
Have you looked to see if there are other ‘Kiosk’ type browsers for Windows? Or even tab / kiosk extensions for your browser?
Well, it seems like I’m able to all the things that I wanted with firefox. Not sure what has happened but I have tested Firefox and other browsers actively and none of them weren’t earlier working the way I needed. Either something has happened in last 4 months in Firefox or then I’m just basically doing very lousy testing. I believe it’s the latter one.
Now I’m able to open other dashboard links as modal which is kind of cool and all the other external hyperlinks opens in new window. Chrome can’t do this and I did not find extension for it. Firefox has this option and it’s working great. Thanks @josh !!
EDIT: only thing that I’m missing anymore is sharptools dashboard refresh automatically after pc wakes up. For some reason Chrome works normally and it refreshes the whole dashboard. Firefox seems to leave news, calendar and camera tiles without refresh. Camera feeds can be set to refresh from the Sharptools side but news or calendar tiles cannot. Now I’m trying to find addon which refreshes webpage on startup. I found a lot of autorefresh addons but they refresh webpage in ever xx period.
