Is window.open() still useful nowadays?

Question

I am learning JS and stumbled across the window.open() function. When I tested it out, it seems that major browsers like Chrome block the popup window. To me, the major function of open() is no longer useful anymore. So does this function still have any usage in current practice?

Answer 1

I think Chrome only blocks window.open if it is not preceded by a user action. For example, if you have an element whose onclick attribute is mapped to a function...

function clickedButton() {
  window.open(...);
}

This would work. While this....

function clickedButton(){
  setTimeout(function(){
    window.open(...);
  })
}

would not.

So yes, it is still useful if you are able to set up your application in such a way that popups are only opened in response to a user action.

While it's true that generally opening new windows is a bad idea for reasons mentioned by Jonathan.Brink, I have used them before for authentication. Logging in through Facebook, for example, requires a new tab or a new window to be opened with their URL (iframes don't work). When it hits my website in its callback again, I close the window, and update the (responsive) website with new login information. Closing new tabs feels.... weird.