Re: Pop-up windows -- is there any situation where they are OK?

Hi

On Sat 08-Dec-2001 at 03:17:44 -0500, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>
> I would suggest
>
> 1) That you write to the WCAG group w3c-wai-gl@w3.org and check the
> status of user agents with respect to turning off spawned windows.

I did a bit of research and user agents are not there yet.

As far as I'm aware the latest IE does not allow spawned windows to be
controlled with out a 3rd party plugin.

Mozilla can block pop-up windows [1], but has no options for controlling
target="_blank" links and you have to edit prefs.js to set this.

Opera 6 has a GUI for:
  
  Refuse pop-up windows
  Accept pop-up windows
  Open pop-up windows in background

but no optins for controlling target="_blank" links.  

So I'm not sure if it's worth writing to the WCAG group... 

> 2) That there is an inconsistency in that it is apparently OK to make
> use of existing windows to change the focus around, but not if they
> are not there yet. This seems like an error, so I will raise an issue
> with the grou myself.  (this is also relevant to the Authoring Tool
> Accessibiltiy Guidelines Group - as shown by the fact that an
> authoring tool developer asked it <grin/>)

Sure, but since people might, or might not already have a browser window
open when they start using the site we couldn't rely on it.

Perhaps a pair of links would do the trick, the second with a
target="_blank":

  Help? | Help? in new window

Chris

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/ConfigPolicy.html

-- 
Chris Croome                               
MKDoc                                             http://mkdoc.com/

Received on Monday, 10 December 2001 09:59:19 UTC