I have a form that needs to open a new window - how to get around popup blockers?

Fribs

Hello Everybody, great resource you've got here. Thank you 🙂

I've put together this Inbound Link Search Form 😉 but I'm having some problems getting the results popup to work without getting blocked.

Right now I have the <form action="index.php" (itself) and I'm using a variable-laden window.open js snippet to popup the results window but every major browser blocks this popup by default.

I tried using target="_blank" but this doesn't work because the variables are not populated until index.php reloads itself, right? What is the most straightforward way to get this around popup blockers? It is important that the form stay open and the selections are remembered so I don't loose my place when using it to search...

Thanks,

Fribs

By the way, when you go link hunting, do you use any other SE's than google? I want to add some but there are scads of them..

bpat1434

Well, for your first question, I'm not sure. But there are loads of sites that have figured this out. I unfortuantely can't be of much help.

As for the other search engines: Yahoo (occasionaly), WebCrawler (rarely), and Oxide (www.oxide.com).

Techinically Oxide just aggregates information from a bunch of search engines, but still is good if you use Yahoo and Google alot.

~Brett

The_Artak

Have you thought about taking the results and loading them into an iframe instead? It shouldn't be that much harder to code...just instead of passing the results into a javascript that tries to force a new window, change that section to generate an iframe, say at the top of the page, with the results loading into that iframe...

maxpup979

Im not quite sure why target="_blank" won't work for you--have you tried putting it in your form tag?

Fribs

maxpup979 wrote:
Im not quite sure why target="_blank" won't work for you--have you tried putting it in your form tag?

maxpup979 - That was my mistake, I did not make myself clear enough. When I used target="_blank", I replaced the index.php in <form action="index.php" with the google search string containing my variables with the variables.

If I use target="blank" and keep action="index.php" then I get a new window, but it is still the same form in the new window. I experimented with this method and a meta refresh tag but it looked sloppy as the form would load and then a few seconds later it would jump to the search results. I take it the only whitehat way of opening this new window is with target="blank".

The Artak - thanks for bringing up IFrames, I'm pretty sure I can work something that looks and feels nice with this technique.

bpat1434 - Thanks for the SE suggestions, I haven't played with oxide yet so I'll see how I like it. I figured there would be a lot who favor Yahoo as well but I wasn't sure about some of the others.

Fribs