Christopher Benson-Manica wrote:
[color=blue]
> DU <drunclear@hotwipethismail.com> spoke thus:
>
>[color=green]
>>And there was another non-maximized window to such non-maximized
>>popped-up window which was closed before.[/color]
>
>
> What?
>
>[color=green]
>>No you don't really or absolutely need to. The operating system, at
>>least Windows, will store the coordinates of the last non-maximized
>>window (before the one you are opening) when it was closed and then will
>>"serve" these again for MSIE 6, NS 7.x and Mozilla. I've tested this
>>before very carefully. E.g.:[/color]
>
>
> I doubt I made myself sufficiently clear (my fault); I'll be
> detailed this time. Start with the main browser window - maybe
> maximized, maybe not. From here we pop up an unmaximized window,
> specifying its position (currently) using the methods I described in
> my original post. From this new window, we must pop up *another*
> unmaximized window[/color]
[1] see addendum on this
and offset its position from that of its parent.[color=blue]
> Left to its own devices, it would end up at the same screen
> coordinates as its parent, correct?[/color]
No. Left to its own devices (that is without any left and/or top and/or
screenX and/or screenY windowFeatures in the window.open() call), it
will end up 15 pixels to the right and 15 pixels to the bottom of its
parent, of its opener. And this behavior is consistent in MSIE 6, NS 7.x
and Mozilla-based browsers (possibly again an Windows os dependency).
The reasoning behind this behavior is to ensure that the user has the
best chance to notice that a new separate window was just created,
opened and that it is on top of the opener, parent. There is an
usability reason behind these 15 pixels offsets.
That is one reason why it's impossible to force maximization of new,
separate window (requested popups): if the parent, opener is not
maximized itself, then its child popup window will NOT be maximized:
this is a 100% certainty ...unless the browser offers a setting to make
all new pages maximized (like Opera 7.x).
I explained all this before in alt.html or in this newsgroup (can't
remember) about a year ago.
That isn't the behavior we're[color=blue]
> looking for in this case. So we have to take specific action to
> ensure that this new window isn't on top of the old one, right? My
> question is, what is the most appropriate such action to take that
> will work for both Netscape and IE?[/color]
Take no action of this nature. :)
But do follow some advices given by J. Nielsen, WAI guidelines. Some
major corporations (e.g.: Sun Microsystems) have applied these guidelines:
Ten Good Deeds in Web Design, J. Nielsen
"Use link titles to provide users with a preview of where each link will
take them, _before_ they have clicked on it."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/991003.html
World Wide Web Consortium Accessibility Initiative regarding popups,
2000
"(...) if your link spawns a new window, or causes another windows to
'pop up' on your display, or move the focus of the system to a new FRAME
or Window, then the nice thing to do is to tell the user that something
like that will happen."
http://www.w3.org/WAI/wcag-curric/sam77-0.htm
I myself use an icon image in the link and I code the title attribute too.
Or are we forced to cater to each[color=blue]
> browser separately, as we currently do?
>[/color]
I could give you better feedback on all this if I could see, examine
your page. As a general rule, I now recommend against positioning popup:
there are factors the web designer does not control (like window
viewport size of the opener, user prefs forcing toolbars to appear like
in my case... and I'm not alone, proxomitron for MSIE can do the same,
etc..).
DU
--
[1] I would absolutely avoid a chain/tree of popup windows. I use
requested popup windows on my site in about 6 files and I always make
sure (or try) to not open more than 1 requested popup at a time: I reuse
the already opened popup otherwise I open a new one.
"Research shows that most users don't like to run more than one
application at a time. In fact, many users are confused by multiple
applications."
Windows User Experience team,
Microsoft Windows User Experience Frequently Asked Questions: Why is the
taskbar at the bottom of the screen?,
March 2001
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...l/winuifaq.asp 
