Les Arbres Web Solutions

Since the release of Google Charts API version 50 on the 11th of April 2021, a small number of users have reported that their charts show the error "b.split is not a function", and two users have reported the error "Cannot read property 'offset' of undefined". The errors occur in multiple chart types but only on a small number of sites.

These errors are not caused by Plotalot. The same errors occur on multiple sites using Google Charts without Plotalot.

After extensive analysis, and help from the Google Charts team, we now know that the problem is caused by the presence of the MooTools Javascript library. This thread has the detailed technical explanation:

https://groups.google.com/g/google-visualization-api/c/ys2YmOXaq8k

Temporary Fix

The quick fix is to use the latest version of Plotalot and set the Component Option, "Specific API Version" to 49. This will fix the problem, but it's not a desirable long term solution, since it does not allow your charts to progress to newer versions of the Google Charts API, which continuously introduce enhancements and browser fixes.

The Long Term Solution

The long term solution is to eliminate MooTools from your site. In some cases you might find that you can do this by changing settings in your template or extensions. In some cases you might have to replace extensions with different ones. It will be time well spent. We see too many Joomla sites loading too many Javascript libraries. And it will be good preparation for Joomla 4, which does not support MooTools. Our extensions dropped all usage of MooTools several years ago.

A much less desirable solution may be to upgrade to MooTools 1.6, which does not cause any problem with Google Charts (Joomla 3 ships with MooTools 1.4.5). This is not an easy job, and it might well break the extensions that use MooTools. We don't recommend this approach.