holy sweet victory

Just figured out something that's been bugging me nonstop for weeks, which has no documentation online: the jquery plugin fancybox doesn't like to have its stuff overwritten, which is to say, you shouldn't define something like this:

var fancy_box_options = fancy_box_defaults;
fancy_box_options.type = 'iframe';
fancy_box_options.width = 696;
fancy_box_options.height = 499;
fancy_box_options.scrolling = 'no';
fancy_box_options["onStart"] = function(link){
var new_link = $.param.querystring($(link).attr("href"), "gmail=" + $("#gmail").val());
$(link).attr("href", new_link);
};

$("a.iframe").fancybox(fancy_box_options);
$("a.iframe_defaults").fancybox();

In one function, and then soon after define:

<% if current_user && @popup_help %>
var fancy_box_options = fancy_box_defaults;
fancy_box_options.type = 'iframe';
fancy_box_options.width = 696;
fancy_box_options.height = 499;
fancy_box_options.scrolling = 'no';

fancy_box_options.href = '<%= popup_help_path(:gmail => current_user.email) %>';
$.fancybox(fancy_box_options);

in another. You'll get a wholly unhelpful error about href being undefined.

All better now -
#facepalms only 4, because I already had a lot of trouble with this previously, I'm over it now, and the sweet release of figuring it out is worth so, so much.