html open a url on new target and focus

Question

I am trying to fix a web site.

It opens a help page in a new window/tab via <a href="..." target="help"> (no other frame has this name)

This works well the first time opening a new window/tab, for the help. But on subsequent clicks the window/tab is loaded but remains hidden.

I tried this:

<script>
    function OpenAndFocusHelp() {
        win=window.open('help/1000CH00017.htm','help');
        win.focus();
    }      
</script>

<a href="help.html" target="help" 
   onclick="OpenAndFocusHelp()">Help</a>

It did not work!

Answer 1

It seems that modern browsers do not allow you to window.focus an existing window. Or at least, it will not give that window focus. (IE9 will actually blink the tab, but most other browsers merely load it but give no indication that the user's attention should be drawn to the new window.)

Therefore, one solution that presents itself is to close the window first, and then re-open it immediately after. For example, declare the following function:

window.openOrFocus = function(url, name) {
    if (!window.popups)
        window.popups = {};
    if (window.popups[name])
        window.popups[name].close();
    window.popups[name] = window.open(url, name);
}

Now, you can write HTML such as this:

<a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="openOrFocus('http://jsfiddle.net/k3t6x/2/', 'window1')">Window 1</a><br />
<a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="openOrFocus('http://jsfiddle.net/KR6w3/1/', 'window2')">Window 2</a><br />

Since it closes the window first, it reliably gives focus to the newly created child window.

This solution also uses the window.popups namespace, so rename the usages of that in the javascript sample if you have a function named popups or have otherwise collided with it.

Caveat: This does not work after a post-back. This is because once you navigate away from the current page, it is no longer the owner of the child windows. Therefore, it can no longer close them. However, it merely degrades to the usual (non-focusing) behavior of using the target attribute.

Tested In: Firefox 4, Chrome 11, IE 9
JsFiddle Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/aqxBy/7/

Answer 2

I think this feature is browser-specific and you can't define the behavior for focusing new tabs or windows..