Fonts Not Loading in Documents & Web Pages

Most web browsers do not allow cross-domain requests, this is because of the same origin security policy. The result is that sometimes when using web-fonts from another domain, this can cause errors and the font does not load in the web page (or HireHop documents).  Basically, for security reasons, some files are being “flagged” as not being allowed to be used across different domains by the server that hosts them, so the following typical code might not seem to work:

<style type="text/css">
@font-face {
    font-family: "OpenSans";
    src: url("https://my_server.com/fonts/OpenSans.woff2") format("woff2");
}
html, body{
    font: normal 16px OpenSans, sans-serif;
}
</style>

The Solution

To fix cross-origin restrictions for your fonts, the response from remote server that hosts the font files must include the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header in the font file.

If you’re using font services like Typekit or Google Fonts, or maybe content delivery networks like BootstrapCDN, CdnJS or JsDelivr to load your prefered fonts, you don’t need to do anything, because the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header is already sent in their response header.

Apache

To configure an Apache web server, put the following code into the httpd.conf or .htaccess file.

1. Add the mime type headers on Apache:

   AddType application/vnd.ms-fontobject    .eot
   AddType application/x-font-opentype      .otf
   AddType image/svg+xml                    .svg
   AddType application/x-font-ttf           .ttf
   AddType application/font-woff            .woff
   AddType application/font-woff2           .woff2
   

2. Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) on Apache for the mime types:

   <IfModule mod_headers.c>
     <FilesMatch ".(eot|otf|svg|ttf|woff|woff2?)$">
       Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
     </FilesMatch>
   </IfModule>
   

NGINX

To configure an NGINX web server, put the following code into the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf or your custom /etc/nginx/conf.d/custom.conf file.

1. Add the mime type headers on NGINX:

   application/vnd.ms-fontobject    eot;
   application/x-font-opentype      otf;
   image/svg+xml                    svg;
   application/x-font-ttf           ttf;
   application/font-woff            woff;
   application/font-woff2           woff2;
   

2. Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) on NGINX for the mime types:

   location ~* .(eot|otf|svg|ttf|woff|woff2)$ {
       add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
   }
   

IIS

To configure the Microsoft IIS, add the following the code to the web.config system.webServer file.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) on IIS

  <system.webServer>
    <httpProtocol>
      <customHeaders>
        <add name="access-control-allow-origin" value="*" />
        <add name="access-control-allow-headers" value="content-type" />
      </customHeaders>
    </httpProtocol>
  </system.webServer>
  

PHP

If you can’t change the server settings, you can always use PHP to deliver the font file.

• Use a server script file rather than a physical font file

  <style type="text/css">
  @font-face {
      font-family: 'OpenSans';
      src: url('https://my_server.com/fonts/OpenSans.php') format('woff2');
  }
  html, body{
      font: normal 16px OpenSans, sans-serif;
  }
  </style>
  

• How to fix cross-domain @font-face issues with PHP

  <?php
  // fonts.php
  header('Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *');
  header('Content-Type: application/font-woff2');
  echo @file_get_contents('/fonts/OpenSans.woff2');
  ?>
  

HireHop is completely customisable, you can even add custom fields, all done using the HireHop JavaScript injection method, in which JavaScript files that you have written are inserted into HireHop pages.  If you look at the page source of a HireHop page, you will see <!– PLUGINS –>, it is after here where the JavaScript for your plugins will be inserted.

HireHop has been built from the ground up, developing our own framework that we call NoHTML, amalgamating existing technology and methodology to produce a framework that is easy to use, extendable and enables fast page loading, even on slow internet connections.

Most pages in HireHop are dynamically built on the client machine using JavaScript and jQuery widgets, similar to REACT and JSX, but more simple and of course using the familiar jQuery framework.  For instance, if you load a Job page and inspect the page (press F12 for the browser’s object inspector), you will see a <div> element at the bottom of the page structured like so:

<div id=”notes_tab“></div>

As you can see the above <div> is just an empty div element. If you click on the “Notes” tab, suddenly the above element is populated with elements.  Looking at your browser’s inspector you will also notice that the only data loaded from the server was some JSON and not the code in the notes tab.  The notes tab was built dynamically on the client machine using a custom jQuery UI Widget called $.notes() (internally called $.custom.notes) that is defined in the file /js/notes.js, and that widget used an ajax call to the server to get the data to populate it.

All the widget/JavaScript files on HireHop are compressed for speed, however to see the expanded source just add a .MAX to the end of the file’s name, for example /js/notes.MAX.js is the uncompressed code with hints for /js/notes.js.

To inject JavaScript into your webpages, if you go to Settings->Company Settings, and in Plugins section, add the url of your JavaScript file, which must be on an https server.  You can add multiple URLs which you can separate with a “;” (semi-colon).  All URLs must be to a secure https domain otherwise browsers will probably refuse to load them.

Extending A Widget

As these are jQuery UI Widgets, you can use a type of Object Orientated programming technique to overwrite parts of the HireHop widgets. For example, we are going to create a small plugin that adds a span element with the word Hello after the Refresh button on the notes widget.

First create a JavaScript file on your web or localhost server and add the following code:

$(document).ready(function(){
// Check if the notes widget exists
if(typeof($.custom.notes)!=”undefined” && hh_api_version<=1) {
// Redefine notes widget
$.widget(“custom.notes“, $.custom.notes, {
_init_main: function() {
// Call the old _init_main
this._super(arguments);
// You could put the code here or call a new function you created
this.new_function_name();
},
// Add your own new function into the widget if you want
new_function_name: function() {
// Add an hello after the refresh button
$(“<span>“,{ html:” Hello” }).insertAfter(this.btnRefresh);
},
});
}
});

The above code is available in a file located at https://myhirehop.com/plugins/demo.js.

Explaining the code above line by line:

$(document).ready(function(){
First we wait for the document to be ready and all page elements and JavaScript files to be loaded.  In this case this is not necessary as the /js/notes.js file is loaded before the plugin script, however for this example we have left it in for reference.

if(typeof($.custom.notes)!=”undefined” && hh_api_version<=1) {
Next we test to see if the notes widget has been defined, if it has we will proceed to overwrite one part of it.  Here we are also testing the HireHop API version the user is using.  As new versions of HireHop are released, the user will have the option to use it and this makes sure that your plugin is compatible with that version.

$.widget(“custom.notes“, $.custom.notes, {
Here we are initiating merging of a new JavaScript object containing functions into the notes widget.

_init_main: function() {
By naming a function the same as an existing one, it will be overwritten.

this._super(arguments);
This calls the inherited function, being the function we are overwriting.

$(“<span>”,{ html:” Hello” }).insertAfter(this.btnRefresh);
We then add a simple span element containing the word “Hello” after the Refresh button. you could also use $(“<span> Hello</span>”).insertAfter(this.btnRefresh);. To address elements, you should always use the variables assigned to elements and never the element ID’s as most ID’s on HireHop are dynamically created and will be different with every instance.  If the element ID has numbers in it or is not nicely named, definitely don’t use it!

new_function_name: function() { }
Finally, this just demonstrates that you can even add your own functions into the widget.

When you reload the HireHop page, you will see the word Hello after the refresh button if you did everything correctly.

Versioning

A huge advantage of using the HireHop NoHTML framework is that all the JavaScript is cached, resulting in fast page loading as the browser uses the JavaScript files in its cache.  This can be problematic when you update your plugin, as all the users using it, their browsers won’t download the updated version, and instead use their cached version, that is unless they clear their browser cache.

To overcome this, when adding your JavaScript URLs to the Plugins options in settings, you can use a versioning parameter, for example for https://www.mywebsite.com/plugin.js you would enter it as https://www.mywebsite.com/plugin.js?v=1. After an update you can then change it to read https://www.mywebsite.com/plugin.js?v=2 which will force all browsers to reload the updated JavaScript file from your server.

Working Demo

If you add the path https://myhirehop.com/plugins/title_bar.js into your plugins in “Settings->Company settings”, you will see this adds a a small box in the top left on job pages and enables users with permission to do so to switch depots with a drop down in the top right of the screen.  If you look at the source code, you can see how this basic plugin works.

Please note, plugins will not load in the settings page for security reasons and will only load if you have a paid subscription. To disable a plugin on a page, add the url parameter no_plugins=1.