[thelist] Odd Netscape 4.7 behavior during page load with popup

[Rob Oviatt]

My boss has had me design and a popup that loads using an onLoad command on 
our front page.  Basically how it works is the person comes to our site, 
their main browser loads the main page, and a small 300x200 popup appears 
with an add offering a free mousepad.  They have the choice of either 
closing the popup or clicking on order, at which time the popup closes and 
a form is loaded into the main browser window.

The problem I'm having is with Netscape 4.7 on both Mac and Windows 
systems. As soon as the popup opens, the main window browser stops updating 
it's display.  It is still loading in all the graphics and such (according 
to activity in status bar), but it doesn't display them.  I suspect that 
this might have to do with the fact that as soon as the popup opens, the 
main browser window is no longer the focus and that NS4.7 won't redraw it's 
display once a page has been loaded (which would only reload the popup and 
start the cycle all over).

I think a timer in the popup function causing a delay in the opening up of 
the popup might do the trick, but the page is quite heavy in graphics 
(professional photo lab), and many of our visitors will be using dialup. A 
timer wouldn't be an accurate due to the wide variance in download times.

Is there any other way of forcing the popup to wait until the page is 
complete loaded before opening?  Or is there a way of opening the popup 
without affecting (effecting?) the loading and display of the page in the 
main browser?

Rob Oviatt



Web Developer / Typesetter
Appleby Color Lab
phone: (506) 459-2320
email: applebyweb at nb.aibn.com
web site: http://www.applebycolorlab.com/