[thelist] webtv (was disabled) javascript

Ray Hill lists at prydain.com
Sat Apr 6 16:07:01 CST 2002


In my experience, the biggest difference between JavaScript support on
WebTV and on PC browsers is that they don't take into account the fact
that there is only one window.  This is a huge problem when it comes
to closing pop-up screens and executing pop-under advertisements.

When you open a pop-up screen on a PC, you expect it to open a new
browser window.  But since WebTV only has one window, it just changes
the location of the current window.  So when you want to close it and
you do a window.close type command, WebTV just ignores it.  What sites
need to do is use their own custom function that does window.close for
PCs and emulates the Back button if you're on WebTV (can't remember
the syntax for that at the moment).

The same is true for pop-under ads.  On PCs, they're relatively
harmless (annoyance factor aside).  But on WebTV, it brings changes
the location of the current window to the advertisement.  And since
hitting the back button just forwards you back to the advertisement,
pop-under ads essentially prevent WebTV users form being able to view
your site at all.  The only way around this one is to disable your
pop-under ads for WebTV users.  [Note that this doesn't happen on the
WebTV Viewer, but *does* happen on a real WebTV browser.]


--ray





More information about the thelist mailing list