Javascript pop-up window focus issue

Question

I want to create a \"popup window\" that get focus each time the button is clicked. The function below executes fine from an onclick event but does not execute

Answer 1

Both opening a popup window without user interaction and focusing a popup window without user interaction is a problem is due to browser security. Also because security is maintained independently, this is browser specific.

It appears that you can open a popup window without user interaction if the user has already have accepted to show blocked popups. But allowing popups does not allow for calling the focus method on any popup window object. This other SO answer touches on this if you would like more information.

You can demo this problem with the following code. Loading the page does not allow for the popup to open in neither Safari, Chrome, or Firefox (keep in mind I'm on a mac so the browser results may be different for windows). If you allow the blocked popup, or already have the popup window open from previously visiting the site, then the window will be reloaded with the url in all 3 browsers. Only Safari allows calling the focus on this already popped up window without user interaction (onload), Chrome and Firefox do not. But as you can see clicking the focus button does still focus the popup window on all 3 browsers, showing that it is possible, but the browser is just blocking it. So from what I can tell this is only possible in Safari (once again keep in mind I have not tried IE). But either way I don't believe it would be good to force your users to use a specific browser to view your site correctly.

var w;

function PopupDelete(delete_images) {
    w = window.open('/testing/t/', 'PopupDelete', 'width=500,height=400,scrollbars=yes');
    console.log(w);
    w.focus();
}

$(function () {
    PopupDelete();

    $('#open').click(PopupDelete);
    $('#focus').click(function () {
        console.log('f', w);
        w.focus();
    });
});

DEMO

Also keep in mind, even if you could do this, when you reloaded the parent it's reopening the popup window and replacing the previous one (and this has to be done because to my knowledge you can't get a window object of a previously opened window, there is no way to maintain that variable to focus it without reopening it first). So this popup window wouldn't keep it's integrity anyway. I believe there must be a better way to completing this task.

Answer 2

On the page load you can show this popup

$(document).ready(function () {
    window.open("URL","Hello","width=500,height=500,scrollbars=yes")
});