Google Voice Widget Hack

Posted February 6th, 2010 by sclathrop

There are lots of people (including me) frustrated by the inflexible Google Voice “Call Me” widget. Since I added it to this website it caused the horizontal page scrolling to remain active as my placement ensured the content would always exceed 100% of the available page width. I spent a little time examining the possible fixes today when this simple solution occurred to me: Simply change the object width attribute value from a fixed pixel size,

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
data="https://clients4.google.com/voice/embed/webCallButton"
width="230"
height="85">
<param name="movie"
value="https://clients4.google.com/voice/embed/webCallButton" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
<param name="FlashVars" value="id=n6o3t7m2y4r4e8a0l0i3d3odf2cdofuar6s4ed!0&style=0" /></object>

to 100%
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
data="https://clients4.google.com/voice/embed/webCallButton"
width="100%"
height="85">
<param name="movie"
value="https://clients4.google.com/voice/embed/webCallButton" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
<param name="FlashVars" value="id=n6o3t7m2y4r4e8a0l0i3d3odf2cdofuar6s4ed!0&style=0" /></object>
This ensures that the “Call Me” widget will simply fill the available width but no more. While it doesn't address our ability to use alternate graphics – even optional ones from Google – it does help un-break the page layout. I am sure applying this same technique for the height attribute, or both, will generate equally effective results on varied page layouts.

Compromise: life's primary ingredient!

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