NYCPHP Meetup

[David Roth]

Hi Rob.

Thanks so much for your helpful post.

After doing a wget on Facebook it looks like they are making the  
window name a unique name each time. I tested out your code example  
and it works flawlessly!

David Roth


On Sep 29, 2010, at 10:17 AM, Rob Marscher wrote:

> On Sep 29, 2010, at 1:56 AM, David Roth wrote:
>> I was successfully using Javascript code for years to open a new  
>> browser window and assign it a unique name without any problems.  
>> That is, until now. :-)
>> The following Javascript code works properly with any other website  
>> I've tried, except for facebook.com
>
> Hi David,
>
> I agree with some of the other suggestions that a modal javascript  
> popup or just using a regular link are the more standard ways of  
> doing this nowadays.  However, I was curious why your code wasn't  
> working.
>
> Here it is:
>
> In the javascript on Facebook, in addition to checking if window ==  
> window.top to break out of iframes, it also sets the window.name to  
> it's own custom name.
>
> When you do window.open(url, name) from your site, it searches the  
> browser windows for one named after what you passed in.  But  
> Facebook has changed the name of your window, so it no longer  
> works.  You can do the same thing on your site by putting this  
> javascript in your html head:
>
> <script type="text/javascript">
> window.name = "hahaThisIsMyWindow"; // obviously, you could name it  
> whatever you want
> </script>
>
>
> However, there is a way around it by referencing a DOMWindow object  
> returned by window.open rather than just relying on the name.  This  
> should work for you (note that the stuff in the <script> tag only  
> needs to be included once on your page):
>
> <script type="text/javascript">
> var modalWindows = {};
> function openModalUrl(url, name)
> {
> 	if (modalWindows[name] == undefined || modalWindows[name].closed) {
> 		modalWindows[name] = window.open(
> 			url,
> 			name,
> 			'width=600, \
> 			height=500, \
> 			directories=no, \
> 			location=no, \
> 			menubar=no, \
> 			resizable=no, \
> 			scrollbars=1, \
> 			status=no, \
> 			toolbar=no'
> 		);
> 	} else {
> 		modalWindows[name].focus();
> 	}
> 	return false;
> }
> </script>
>
> <a href="#" onclick="return openModalUrl('http://facebook.com/USERNAME_GOES_HERE' 
> , 'facebook');">Become a friend on Facebook</a>
>
>
> -Rob