Mickey Segal wrote:[color=blue]
> Richard Cornford wrote:[color=green]
>> Is the - showDocument - method really the problem? I would
>> have thought that attempting to use it to navigate the
>> current window would be totally uninfluenced by pop-up
>> blocking. That is the activity that is analogous to
>> hyperlinks.[/color]
>
> In many Java environments, navigating the current window to a
> new URL terminates the Java applet at the original URL.[/color]
But when Java initiates that navigation it is in a position to know that
it will be terminated as a consequence and persist its current internal
state on the server.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Your problem is with attempting to target new windows with
>> the method, and targeting new windows with hyperlinks is
>> already unavailable in the strict DTDs of HTML 4.01 and
>> XHTML 1.0.[/color]
>
> A huge number of Web sites have user-initiated opening of
> new browser windows.[/color]
The vast majority of web sites are authored by individuals with little
or no understanding of the technologies they purport to be using and a
total unawareness of the issues surrounding their use. Often the results
are barely functional on default configurations of IE running on default
installations of a Windows OS. And as soon as Microsoft alter any
default state those individuals start to get indigent that the half-ass
hacks they have been using suddenly stop working as they had previously.
Appealing to the precedence provided by a numerical majority is not a
recipe for quality software authoring when the average is so poor.
[color=blue]
> None of the common pop-up blockers stop such
> user-initiated pop-ups.[/color]
All the pop-up blockers I have ever seen are capable of stopping all
pop-ups of any type. The better ones tend not to default to do that but
you may not have made an accurate assessment of what qualifies as common
on the world of pop-up blocking. You seem to be assuming that google
tool bar and Microsoft's new pop-up blocking define the common methods.
My guess would be that personal-firewall/internet-security style
programs (content-inserting/re-writing proxies) make up the real
majority, and they are often in a very bad position to draw distinctions
between "requested" and "unrequested" pop-ups.
[color=blue]
> In contrast, user-initiated pop-ups are blocked from Java.[/color]
Strictly those would be Java initiated pop-ups. The fact that Java is
opening them as a direct consequence of user action is clearly not known
to the pop-up blocking mechanisms.
[color=blue]
> It is not clear if this blocking is by design or an error.[/color]
The applet plug-ins are presumably not propagating UI events into the
containing DOM where they could be observed and used to make a judgement
about pop-ups. Probably that was a design error, but not unexpected as
at the time it would have been difficult to anticipate the extent to
which pop-ups would be abused for antisocial purposes.
[color=blue]
> Google responded to the blocking of user-initiated
> pop-ups illustrated at
http://www.segal.org/java/pop_window/
> by writing "We are aware of this error and our engineering
> team is working to correct it." However, no correction
> appeared and Microsoft did the same thing.[/color]
You shouldn't hold your breath.
<snip>[color=blue]
> Although the entire focus of this thread has been on ways
> to deal with the current situation as it is that does not
> make normative asides inappropriate.[/color]
I don't see any evidence of trying to deal with the current situation.
You seem to be trying to find a way of using pop-ups in a world where
they would be best consigned to history and the desire to use them
designed out of Internet systems.
[color=blue]
> Since you asked so politely for more details about what we
> want to achieve with pop-up windows, here are two examples
> of things that users of our software (mostly using Java 1.1)
> can do:
> 1. Click a Reference button and see a new browser window with
> a paper from the scientific literature expanding on information
> in our database. These papers are at external URLs.[/color]
Navigation within the current window will result in the user seeing the
referenced resource, they can use the back button to return to the
previous page. The state of the Java applet can be transferred to, and
restored from, the server.
Alternatively, IFRAME elements within positioned DIVs scripted into
in-window pop-ups would be in a position to show external resources on
javascript enabled modern dynamic browsers without leaving the current
page.
[color=blue]
> 2. Click a Printable Page button and get a summary Web
> page they can paste into other programs or print.[/color]
Ditto, plus printer specific style-sheets.
Richard.
