Firefox javascript bookmarklet open tab in background - javascript

I've written a bookmarklet to look a word up in a Chinese dictionary:
javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt('%E8%AF%8D%E8%AF%AD',''))};if(Qr)(function(){window.open('http://nciku.com/search/all/'+Qr);})();
This opens a new tab with search results for your selected word or a word you type in at the prompt. Is there a way to load the new tab in the background? I'd like to keep the focus on the page I'm looking at, and look at the search results later.
There is an option "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately" in Firefox, this doesn't help.
Edit: Note that this is for my use, so an answer that tells me how to change Firefox (3.0.11) settings to do this would work as well. Also I've tried the following modification, but it's still focusing the new tab.
javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt('%E8%AF%8D%E8%AF%AD',''))};if(Qr)(function(){var%20oldWin=this;window.open('http://nciku.com/search/all/'+Qr);oldWin.focus()})();
Edit 2:
Looking around to see if I can find an answer I see this guy who's got the opposite problem (new tabs don't get focus, but he wants them to have it), but with no resolution:
Possible to set tab focus in IE7 from JavaScript
There's apparently talk about a _tab target in HTML 5, but that doesn't help me much.
http:/ /forums.whatwg.org/viewtopic.php?t=185&highlight=tab+focus
(apparently as a new user I can only post one link, so I've mauled it)
This seems pretty broken browser behaviour if this is impossible.

In FireFox type about:config and change browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground to true.
This has worked for me with browser bookmarklets.
source: http://lifehacker.com/263940/force-links-to-open-in-the-background

No, not programmatically through JavaScript. You don't have control over the user's browser preferences, only they have control over that.
Moreover, even if you did have control over that, you shouldn't do it, because it undermines the control that your script is given to you by the browser. If the user wants a page to open in the background, they should be able to control it, not you, as the developer.

Apparently this is only possible with previously opened windows, not the root window.
Calls to window.open with the same
window name as an already existing
window, loads the URL into that window
and gives a reference to the window
back. The window isn't given focus,
its opener property isn't changed, and
a third argument to window.open is
ignored. You can use the focus method
to give the window focus manually.
var oldWin = window.open("url.html","oldName");
oldWin.focus(); // give focus

Facing the same issue, I only noticed that if you alert() something just after opening the window, Firefox would not switch to the newly opening tab.

Related

how return focus on parent window using javascript?

is it possible return focus on tab parent using javascript?
I read some threads about this problem, but i didn't find solutions.
I tried
window.opener.parent.focus()
and
window.opener.focus();
but it doesn't work.
Can someone help me?
Thanks
Generally, you cannot do this inside a web page. Because it's the user's choice which tab/window she wants to focus on and browsers such as firefox and chrome respect such choices by providing configs to open new tabs in the background or not. But under several very special cases, you may still achieve this.
If you want to open a new tab and return focus immediately, you can try to simulate a 'ctrl+click' event on a link to open the tab on the background. Refer to this thread Open a new tab in the background?(Only for chrome, API may already changed. So it may only works on an obsoleted version)
If you are shipping with an extension, do it in the extension code. For example: in chrome extension.
If your script is for a customized browsers which you have control on / you can affect the design, you can implement the function in the browser side and expose an API for your script.

window.open() in IE 9

when i try to
window.open()
in IE 9 , it opens it with favorites sidebar (if it was present in parent window) this is behaviour unique to IE , and it breaks dialog windows as I envisioned them. Any hope to fix that?
Since you specified that you're using this for a dialog, I feel I should discourage this. Using window.open() is not ideal for creating dialog boxes.
Some browsers will ignore your 'new window' request, and open it as a new tab. This can be configured by the browser user, so is out of your control.
If the user has toolbars and side panels open, there's a strong likelyhood of them showing up in the new window, which will mangle your layout. Again, you'll need to test this in every browser, and even then you can't be sure without knowing all the config options that might affect it.
Opening a new window does not give you a modal dialog box. You can't prevent the user from clicking back to the parent window and ignoring the dialog box.
Therefore, if you want to make a dialog box, you would be much better off using a javascript library that opens a box inside the current page. It's much more flexible, and gives you much more control over the end result than window.open().
If you're using JQuery, you might want to start by looking here: http://choosedaily.com/1178/15-jquery-popup-modal-dialog-plugins-tutorials/, but there are stacks of others available (it's a very easy thing to write, especially in JQuery, so there's plenty of plugins out there you can try till you find one which is perfect for you)
Try changing it to window.location.href= 'url + target="_blank"'

How to open a new window (or in a tab), but not give it focus

I have a function that I want to open up a URL in a new tab on a click event, but not give that tab focus. Is this possible with javascript?
You can't steal focus from a newly opened window. It's a security feature preventing sites from "taking control" of your browser. That would be a browser configuration setting.
As far as "hiding" focus from a popup, you might be thinking of what's called "PopUnder". Basically you use window.open() and set the option _blank and the paramater alwaysLowered, but it will not work gracefully for an average website. It requires you to have a signed script and take advantage of the Netscape Security PrivilegeManager, like this:
netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege("UniversalPreferencesRead UniversalBrowserAccess"); // etc...
Sorry bro :)
You can attempt to open a new window, then set focus back to the current window. However, user settings may make this impossible, or it might already be the default behaviour.
Pop–unders are used by some web sites probably to disassociate the web site from the window (i.e. so you don't know where it came frome). So they are assuming a certain naivety on behalf of the user. They are considered spam and treated with the same contempt.
If you outline what it is you are trying to achieve using a pop–under, you might get advice on better ways of doing it. Or not. :-)
To my knowledge it is impossible bro.Since the user's browser Settings will conflict with your logic

How can you open 2 windows even when ie6 popup blocker is enabled

It seems like when trying to open 2 windows from a succession of windows.open calls, it only allows the first window to open and deletes the reference to the second window. I know this probably sounds a little kludgy, but we do need to have that second popup.
Any ideas?
Unfortunately we are addressing a user-case, where ie6 on the user end has popup blocker enabled.
EDIT: I just realized that you probably are using a blank ('') window name for both windows:
var win = window.open(url, '', 'blah=1');
var win2 = window.open(url2, '', 'stuff=1'); //later
This is probably handled with different windows in browsers other than IE6.
If that does not work, you might consider injecting divs that display on top of your content (instead of using popups), which is considered a better practice.
The IE pop-up blocker, by default, only allows one new window to be opened per user-initiated-action (i.e. a click on some element). If you try to open two new windows in the same handler in response to a single user-initiated-action, only the first window will successfully be opened. This is by design.
There is an override key that users can use: on IE6 I think it is CTRL, but it might be CTRL+ALT because it got changed in later versions (not sure if that was back-ported or not).
If you go to Tools->Internet Options->Pop-up Blocker->Settings->Blocking Level: and look at the value in the drop-down box for "High" it will tell you the override key in a parenthetical phrase.
In the same settings dialog, you can also add this specific site to the "Allowed sites" list, and then pop-up blocker will let all new window creation attempts on said site succeed. I'm pretty sure this list can also be pre-populated through group policy or IEAK or something like that too. But it's just a list that is stored in the registry, so you can also write log-in scripts that will just add things if they need to be added.
If you have further questions, let me know (I was the developer who implemented the IE pop-up blocker).
IE6 makes it sound like it's a corporate installation. Assuming that's true, contact your administrators and have group policy set your internal website to be in the Intranet zone, and turn off the popup blocker for that zone.

Creating new tab / switching between Tabs in Firefox?

I am looking for a way to improve the workflow in a PHP based CMS. There is a lot of switching between the editor mode and the preview mode of the page. The editor mode is huge to load, and so I would like to open the preview mode in a different window.
I don't want to use new windows or an iframe within the current window to keep the workflow simple and to avoid confusion.
Is there a way to explicitly open a new tab (not window), and to jump to that tab from a document, in Firefox? The number of users is limited, so there is the possibility to set up the client with the necessary extensions / permissions.
I know Firefox can be forced to open all links in tabs, but I think that won't cut it, as I still can't address and focus the newly opened window.
Thanks for all the great answers everyone. I have now enough material to decide whether I'll take the greasemonkey approach, rely on the user to set up "open in tabs" and address the window by name, or use a "inline" HTML solution as so many of you suggested. I am accepting the answer that I feel went most effort into.
There is no way to force a window to open as a tab. It's all dependent on the user's preference settings.
I second the answers that say you should do this in HTML using Javascript. Then it can work in all browsers that support JS.
I would put two divs on the page and show/hide each div depending on which tab is selected. If you are clever about this you could trap the click on the tab and determine if the user left-clicked or middle-clicked. If they left click you load that tab on the page. If they middle-click you let the browser open a new tab/window (according to the user's prefs, don't try to force it), and leave the current window unchanged (that is, don't switch to the new tab). The action for clicking on the tab would be to use AJAX to load the contents of the remote document and put it into the tab. Use Javascript to modify the URL before submitting the AJAX request so that the server knows to send a web page fragment instead of the whole page.
The advantage of this dual-natured solution is that the tabbed approach will work the way you want it to work for the majority of cases, but for users with, say, two screens, or who prefer switching between browser tabs, they will still have the flexibility to work in multi-window mode. This can all be done without any browser extensions and it should work equally well in IE as well as Firefox, Opera, etc. Avoid locking yourself into one browser, even one as excellent as Firefox. One day a customer will need to use Opera or Safari and you'll be stuck.
You say you don't want to use an iframe to avoid confusion. Now I don't know about the layout of your website, but I've been using the approach that the editor opens in its own div right next to the content being edited and the content is being live updated as you edit. No need to change tabs.
(If the window is too narrow there are HTML tabs Edit and Preview)
It does not seem to add confusion to the user and for me this approach works really well. Maybe it's worth considering in your case.
What about using iframes and JavaScript?
I know you said you want to avoid 'confusion using iframes', but in my opinion if you really need to load different pages at the same time this is the best option.
In theory, you could create your own tab system using javascript or even better, using jQuery, because its UI module offers pretty cool tab control.
For every tab you could load separate "headerless-footerless" version of your specific admin page inside <iframe> element. If user wanted to modify something different, he will simply click on the tab and bring different iframe.
All this could also be done using AJAX, but iframe solution is quite easy as you just need to load ready page and all postbacks are already handled by original page and separated from master-admin-page.
You might also need to play a little bit to set correct height of your iframe to fit all the content without scrollbars, but this again, is just bit of javascript.
Nope, there's no way to force the opening of a new tab, simply because this would be unsupported by un-tabbed browsing
You can only set it to open a new window, not a new tab.
Greasemonkey springs to mind - a quick google gives open in tabs on left click. I think you could modify that so it only runs on one particular page, and you'd be up up and away.
This question made me wonder if HTML 5 allows that sort of specification, and it doesn't (nothing in one of the other hyperlink attributes, either). A new browsing context is a new browsing context, there's no way to express a preference for tab over window or foreground over background.
You can't force a tab, but if you use a target with a specific name, like target="my_cms_window", many browsers will open this as a new tab. Additionally, they will remember the name and if you use the target repeatedly, put the contents in the same tab. I have found that this works pretty well in the real world.

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