ssDialogFix

fixes for IE Modal/Modeless Dialogs

Background

• Window targeting is broken, so new opening URLs always opens new windows (even when a target window is explicitly set).  Each of these actions is affected:
  • Submitting forms
  • Opening hyperlinks
  • Programmatically using window.navigate(), window.location=url, window.location.assign(), window.location.reload(), window.location.replace()
• The window.opener property is neglected.  It should refer to the opening window object (where window.showModalDialog() was called), but is empty instead.
• Keyboard shortcuts are disabled.
• IE's context menu is disabled.
• Cookies are inconsistently available in the dialog.
• The CSS accelerator property is broken.  It is simply ignored.
• The document.title property is partially broken.  It can only be set declaratively with <title></title> tags when the page loads, but not programmatically at runtime (actually it can be changed at runtime, but those changes are never shown in the dialog's titlebar).

Introduction

Usage

1. Include dialogs.js in your page:
   <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="dialogs.js"></script>
2. In script, call fixDialog.  Example:

   <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
   fixDialog();
   </script>

   To enable the custom context menu (it remains disabled by default), pass a boolean value of true to fixDialog: fixDialog(true);

the fun stuff

Notes

• The cookies & window.opener property fixes require that you pass the window object to the dialogArguments parameter of the showModalDialog (or showModelessDialog) method.  For example: window.showModalDialog('http://throbs.net/', window, 'dialogTop:3px;').  (This is often very useful for other reasons as well).
• CSS accelerator property - My fix for this is somewhat kludgy, and sometimes creates a "flicker" of the dialog when toggling accelerator highlighting. 
• The Context menu is a custom re-creation of the basics in IE's native Context menu.  Certain menu items cannot be re-created.
• The window.location.replace() method is only partially fixed.  It doesn't actually replace the history entry (neither would it have in a dialog), but at least it opens the URL (and where it should) now.
• The window.location property is still broken.  I haven't figured out how to reimplement a native window object property.
• The document.title property is still broken.  I have found no way to force the titlebar to reflect dynamic changes to it.

History

• 2004-10-01 - improved form/link target fix technique (should be faster); improved demo to compare with and without fixes
• 2004-03-16 - fixed passed window check (error when window was not passed in)
• 2004-03-10 - first public release

Support

credits/author

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