window.close() doesn't work on iOS

Question

I open a new window with window.open() to redirect users to the oauth login page. However, after successful login when the user is redirected back to my app the previous window with the window.open call does not close itself in ios.

On the iPad it would close the wrong window and on the iPhone it wouldn't close the window at all. The code works fine on Android and on desktop versions of Chrome and Firefox.

After much rooting about, I found a fix (posted below). If anyone has any better ideas or root causes, please post here.

Answer 1

here is what I ended up getting to work...
never could get the window.close function to work; even in the setTimeout as shown above

I tested this on:
    windows XP : Chrome20,Firefox12,IE8
    Android gingerbread : android browser
    Android Ice Cream : android browser, Firefox
    Ipad : default browser (i assume its safari)
    Iphone 3gs and 4s : default

---

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=\"JavaScript\">
    function refresh() {
        var sURL = unescape("http://(some web page)/");
        window.location.replace(sURL);
    }
    function closeWindow() {
        var isiPad = navigator.userAgent.match(/iPad/i) != null;
        var isiPhone = navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i) != null;
        if (isiPad || isiPhone) {
           setTimeout( \"refresh()\", 300 );
        } else {
           window.close();
        }
    }
</SCRIPT>

...... and the html code .......

<p><input class="bigbutton" type="button" name="cancel" id="cancel" value="Cancel" onClick="closeWindow()"></p>

---

Answer 2

After some searching, I found this tweet which posts a workaround - https://twitter.com/#!/gryzzly/statuses/177061204114685952 by @gryzzly

Copied here in full

window.close() doesn't work on iOS after window.open()ing or target="_blank"? do setTimeout(window.close, timeout); where timeout > 300.

This along with removing a .focus() in which I focus on the parent window before closing the new window completely solved the problem for me.