Focus tab or window

Question

for a little app, I'm opening a few windows/tabs from my script. Whether the browser opens a window or a tab is of course not in my hand.

However, I hold the references to the newly created window objects and I do change their content "remotely" from another window. This all happens under the same document.domain so no xss problem.

The problem is, I cannot reliably focus those created windows/tabs. Since I'm writing a very specific app for a customer, I'm only targeting Firefox as browser. One option I have is of course just to do a remoteWindow.alert('foobar'); to get bring that window/tab up front, but that is pretty ugly isn't it.

I found this answer How to focus window/tab like alert()?

and it's said there, that Firefox has an option to allow script focus. So finally my question is, what is that option ? I searched the about:config for "tabs" and "focus" but didn't find anything related.

How to configure ?

Answer 1

The following appears to work in IE8 and FF13:

<script type="text/javascript">
// Stupid script to force focus to an existing tab when the link is clicked.
// And yes, we do need to open it twice.
function openHelp(a) {
    var tab = window.open(a.href, a.target);
    tab.close();
    tab = window.open(a.href, a.target);
    return false;
}
</script>
<a href="help.html" target="help" onclick="return openHelp(this);">Help</a>

Answer 2

The only solution I see, is to force the popup in a new window, since there doesn't seem to be a way to focus another tab. This solution also requires you to change the default Javascript security settings in Tools > Options > Content tab and click on the Advanced button next to Enable Javascript checkbox and check the middle box to allow focusing windows.

To force the use of a window rather than a tab, use win = window.open("http://www.google.com", "test" ,"modal=yes"); and then call win.focus(); whenever you feel like it.

EDIT: Actually forgot to mention the fact that this is FF only.

Answer 3

See Mozilla's documentation: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Code_snippets/Tabbed_browser.

  var wm = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1"]
                     .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator);
  var browserEnumerator = wm.getEnumerator("navigator:browser");

  // Check each browser instance

  while (browserEnumerator.hasMoreElements()) {
    var browserWin = browserEnumerator.getNext();
    var tabbrowser = browserWin.gBrowser;

    // Check each tab of this browser instance
    var numTabs = tabbrowser.browsers.length;
    for (var index = 0; index < numTabs; index++) {
      var currentBrowser = tabbrowser.getBrowserAtIndex(index);
      if (/*some logic*/) {

        // For an example
        tabbrowser.selectedTab = tabbrowser.tabContainer.childNodes[index];

        // Focus *this* browser-window
        browserWin.focus();
        break;
      }
    }

Here is an easier event-driven approach - https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Listening_to_events_on_all_tabs.

Answer 4

Have you tried window.focus()?

Answer 5

There's no real way to do this for the simple reason that if websites had this ability, they'd end up using it to automatically focus ads or whatnot.

It can be done, but only in Firefox IF the user has it enabled, which he most likely won't.

Answer 6

Have you tried in menu Tools -> Options… -> Content tab -> Advanced button next to "Enable JavaScript", to check the box named "Raise or Lower Windows" ?

An example on how to set the focus can be found here.

Answer 7

It is dirty and ugly, so it is only plus information: if you call an alert() in any of the open tabs/windows, that tab will gain focus.

Answer 8

To answer your question: I've found http://www.gtalbot.org/FirefoxSection/Popup/PopupAndFirefox.html#RaiseLowerSetting, which says the setting you're looking for is called "allow raise and lower windows".

Another setting would be about:config/dom.disable_window_flip (to false), found here.

Answer 9

Expanding on Alex's contribution above. The use case is having a CMS. When a site owner is logged into the CMS, and the front end is loaded in another tab. You give the site owner a link on the front end that reloads the CMS tab and focuses is.

Place this javacript on front end pages (or include in a global JS file):

<script type="text/javascript">
// Stupid script to force focus to an existing tab when the link is clicked.
// And yes, we do need to open it twice.
function loadAdmin(a) {
    var tab = window.open(a.href, a.target);
    tab.close();
    tab = window.open(a.href, a.target);
    return false;
}
</script>

I like to put the CMS link just after the H1 content. Again, this is only if they are logged into the CMS. In this case I am pointing to a Framed CMS, so it has to know what to load into the main frame (pun intended).

<h1>
    Page Heading
    <a href="/admin/main/?load=pages/page.cfm?id=#request.pageid#" title="Edit this page"
        onclick="return loadAdmin(this);"
        target="#cgi.server_name#wvAdmin"            
    ><img src="/media/admin/icon-edit.png" alt="Edit this page"/></a>
</h1>

This to make sure the tab is unique, in case I have several CMSs in my browser (support multiple clients):

target="#cgi.server_name#wvAdmin"

Finally, on the frame loader in the CMS, add this...

<script type="text/javascript">
    window.name = '#cgi.server_name#wvAdmin';
</script>

... to ensure that if the user opened the CMS on their own, we can still work with it.

Answer 10

The simple answer is: you can't. Browsers doesn't expose that kind of API to javascript.

Answer 11

Opening new browser windows/tabs is problematic. Have you considered jqueryui dialogs instead of opening a new window?