The question was fairly descriptive but I'll describe it further.
Basically, I have window1. Clicking a button link opens window2. Clicking a button in window2 opens window3, clicking a button in window3 should bring window2 back to the front of the screen on top of window2.
I'm not sure how this is exactly done, however I have used and played around with focus(), opener and other various methods and I cannot seem to get it to work properly.
Thanks for any help in advance!
opener.focus()
does work. If it doesn't for you, we'll need a test case.
Some things that might cause problems: calling it in an event handler that fires before the button's window gets focus due to the click (but I don't think that'd usually be the case); running it on a browser that stuffs pop-ups into browser tabs instead.
(I agree with Max's comment. Pop-ups with cross-window scripting are generally best avoided.)
The following code works for me on Firefox (Mac & Windows), Safari (Mac & Windows), and IE8 (Windows, of course). I haven't tested IE6 or IE7.
However, it does not work on Chrome for either Mac or Windows. Specifically, clicking the button once creates the pop-up and brings it to the front. However, returning to the original window and clicking the button again does not refocus the popup.
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
var popupWindow = null;
var doPopup = function () {
if (popupWindow && !popupWindow.closed) {
popupWindow.focus();
} else {
popupWindow = window.open("http://google.com", "_blank",
"width=200,height=200");
}
};
</script>
</head>
<body>
<button onclick="doPopup(); return false">
create a pop-up
</button>
</body>