Popup Tester Web Control
A realization that I came to in the recent past was the lack of usability around a lot of web applications. Take for example Outlook Web Access (OWA). A fundamental piece of this appplication is the ability to use popups. For the past 6 months or so, I have not been able to use our OWA installation, because everytime I clicked on Reply, the window just went away.
It finally dawned on me last week that the reason why this was happening was because of FireFox’s popup blocker. Why then, would OWA not tell me that I need to disable my popup blocker to let the application function properly?
With that, I’ve made a control that will make it easy for anyone to add tests for popup blockers to their ASP.NET applications. The PopupTester control is derived from Panel, which means that it is a container control to which you can simply add whatever other controls you want to display if a popup blocker is found.
Using this control is as easy as 1, 2, 3:
- Add a reference to MattBerther.Web.PopupTester.dll from your ASP.NET application
- Register the control on your aspx page with [asp]< %@ Register TagPrefix="mbw" Namespace="MattBerther.Web.UI.WebControls" Assembly="MattBerther.Web.PopupTester" %>[/asp]
- Add an instance to your aspx page with [asp]
Popups are being blocked [/asp]
Again, you are free to place whatever content you like inside the PopupTester control. The control will render with a style of display:none, unless a popup blocker is found. If one is found, it renders with display:block. This control should work with Netscape, Internet Explorer and FireFox.
If you’re using popups in an ASP.NET application, you owe it to your users to give this control a shot. There is no cost, so what do you have to lose?
If you are using this, Id love to hear your thoughts about it…
[asp.net] Popup Tester Web Control
Using Popups on your web pages?
ASP.NET Rolled up Goodness
Seems to be a nice control - but can you explain how you do the test for a popup blocker?
This would help non ASP-Users to understand your thoughts :-)
The whole meat of this control is a simple javascript file. The javascript file tries to open a window, and if the window is opened then popup blockers are assumed to not be present.
If the window is not able to be opened, it tries again with a slightly different mechanism. If both tries fail, then a popup blocker is assumed to be installed.
YARBS…oder so ähnlich
i cannot open pop up window.
when i open that blank screen with no content is displaying
plz help me.
sujatha
Sujatha,
This control is not designed to open popups, but rather check that the user has not disabled them.
I need to disable the pop up blockers without notifying user.
Is this possible through javascipt to open pop up windows of the aplication with Pop Up blockers on.
Sumit,
I would imagine that popup blockers would be useless if you could programmatically disable them. As far as I know, there is no way that you can disable a blocker programmatically.
Great Control. Very easy to use, havent found a popup blocker yet where the control wont catch it yet the popup blocker still works.
Suggested Improvement: Public property on the control IsPopupBlocker - will be true if there are active popup blockers, false if there are not. With something like this, I could put the control on my login page, and not let the login function run unless IsPopupBlocker = false.
Jacob: I’m not sure if I can provide the feature that you’re requesting as the popup test is done on the client side and I would need to somehow force communication with the server.
I’ll look into it though, and keep you posted.
I havent looked at your source code as yet but I expect that you could make the client side javascript call the .NET’s __doPostback function - giving the popup blocker as the control and then use the controls event handle set a flag that the user could access.
Great control.
I use popupTester.Visible to determine if the blocker is active or not.
Then put the result in a session. Works fine for me.
The control is not detecting my browser and third party pop up blockers. detectPopupBlocker() always returns false. I’m using IE 6 with yahoo popup blocker. Any suggestions?
I just upgraded to IE 7 and the control keeps firing even though I have pop-ups allowed. It was working great in IE 6. Any ideas?
Thanks.
I need to disable the pop up blockers without notifying user.
Is this possible through javascipt to open pop up windows of the aplication with Pop Up blockers on.
I want to disable the pop up blockers without notifying user.
Is this possible.if yes, then can you please provide the code.
Its a grt tht pop up blocker get detected at server side.. grt work..
colud you please let me know how to get value TRUE or FALSE from popupTester at server side
this looks very useful. i just wish there was a little more information on implementing it. i am new to asp.net and i am not quite sure how to use it but would like to learn.
thank you
Nice!