JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition

Window Control Methods

The Window object defines several methods that allow high-level control of the window itself. The following sections explore how these methods allow us to open and close windows, control window position and size, request and relinquish keyboard focus, and scroll the contents of a window. We conclude with an example that demonstrates several of these features.

Opening Windows

You can open a new web browser window with the open( ) method of the Window object. This method takes four optional arguments and returns a Window object that represents the newly opened window. The first argument to open( ) is the URL of the document to display in the new window. If this argument is omitted (or is null or the empty string), the window will be empty.

The second argument to open( ) is the name of the window. As we’ll discuss later in the chapter, this name can be useful as the value of the target attribute of a <form> or <a> tag. If you specify the name of a window that already exists, open( ) simply returns a reference to that existing window, rather than opening a new one.

The third optional argument to open( ) is a list of features that specify the window size and GUI decorations. If you omit this argument, the new window is given a default size and has a full set of standard features: a menu bar, status line, toolbar, and so on. On the other hand, if you specify this argument, you can explicitly specify the size of the window and the set of features it includes. ...