RE: new window

What about target="display"?  I use it all the time with or without frames.
Kate Pollara

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
[mailto:owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org]On Behalf Of Larry Coats
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 11:34 PM
Cc: hwg-techniques
Subject: Re: new window




Business & Life Coach Maria wrote:

> Mark,
>   Try using _blank instead of _new.  It will allow someone to see an new
> window.

>
> [mailto:owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org]On Behalf Of Mark Johnson
>
> I'm using target="_new" as an option in an A tag to launch the URL in a
> new window.  The new window that is launched is placed exactly over the
> top of the existing (old) window.  Is there a way to force the new
> window down and right a little so that the user realizes that a new
> browser window was launched?

There are only a handful of recognized values in target, and of these, only
target="_blank" is used outside of frames. target="_top", for example,
replaces the top frameset if the site is in frames.

target="_blank" is a recognized keyword that requests a new UNNAMED window.

target="_new" is not a recognized keyword. Any unrecognized keyword, be it
target="_new" or target="mywindow" or whatever, requests a new NAMED window.

Most of the time, you won't see any difference between using an unnamed
window versus a named window. The difference arises if the user uses another
one of these links without having first closed the previous new window.
target="_blank" will always open another new window. When the window is
named and already exists, though, that window is reused rather than opening
a new window -- and the window does NOT automatically move to the front. So
if you've used target="_new" and the user hasn't closed the "_new" window,
it will appear as if nothing happens when the user returns to the previous
window and clicks on a link that specifies target="_new". The user will have
to manually move the "_new" window to the front to see the new contents.

As far as the positioning of the new window, in Netscape 4, both
target="_new" and target="_blank" open the new window right on top of the
old window. I played with this a little and couldn't find any way to force
Netscape 4 to move it over a bit. However, if the user right-clicks and uses
"open in new window," the new window IS placed a little to the right and
below the old window.

Some browsers are even less obvious than Netscape 4 about lettting you know
that a new window has opened. At least in Netscape 4 under Windows, a new
tab shows up at the bottom of the screen to show that another window is
open. In Opera, you don't get any indication that a new window has opened,
since Opera doesn't actually open a new window -- it has multiple documents
within the same window. And some browsers (at least some versions of AOL
browsers work this way) don't even support new windows and happily ignore
your target attribute.

I've been trying to get in the habit of putting some text such as (opens new
window) next to a link that opens a new window so that a user always knows
what to expect. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't like
surprises -- if a new window is going to open, I'd like to know that BEFORE
I choose a link.

Larry Coats

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