Facebook Gadget - The Black Shadow
Update May 2010
Facebook added the "black shadow" on the mobile version of the site too. This breaks completely the Gadget and there is no workaround currently. We are working on a fix...
Short Story
In early February 2010, Facebook introduced a change in the code of its sites which can cause a black overlay to appear on top of the Facebook Gadget. When this happens, clicking anywhere on the gadget will open Facebook in a new tab.
For fixing it, choose Edit Settings from the Gadget menu (the small triangle pointing downwards at the top of the Gadget) and choose the "Mobile" Interface. Check back after a few days if the normal interface is working again, by selecting the "Auto" Interface (unless you prefer to keep the Mobile one).
This will fix only the "small" version of the Gadget. When you expand the Gadget to canvas view, if you see a black overlay you have no choice but opening Facebook in a new tab.
Long Story
The Facebook Gadget is based on the Mobile and Touch versions of Facebook, encapsulated within an iGoogle Gadget. This approach offers great functionalities, but it depends heavily on code changes introduced by Facebook. In February 2010, Facebook added some code for preventing framing of its sites within other pages. This broke most iGoogle Gadgets and some Chrome extensions.
The change is affecting only the standard Facebook site and the Touch version, while the Mobile one is working fine (it is meant for simple devices with no Javascript support). As of February 12th, it seems that the framing protection has been removed and the Gadget is working fine again. But some users are still having problems, possibly because of caching issues or different data centers used by Facebook. So you may still have to use the workaround or not, depending on your situation.
The Gadget settings allow you to select manually which interface to use:
- Touch: the standard nice and cool interface (Facebook Touch). If you see a black shadow on top of it, try switching to "Mobile"
- Mobile: a simplified interface (Facebook Mobile), which usually works fine. But it's less "sexy"
- Auto: let the Gadget decide the best interface for your browser. Normally this selects the Touch interface, but some browsers may choose the Mobile one instead (e.g. older IE versions that can't display the Touch interface correctly)