How do I get JavaScript to open a popup window on the current monitor

Question

Scenario:

1. The user has two monitors.
2. Their browser is open on the secondary monitor.
3. They click a link in the browser which calls window.open() with a specific top and left window offset.
4. The popup window always opens on their primary monitor.

Is there any way in JavaScript to get the popup window to open on the same monitor as the initial browser window (the opener)?

Answer 1

No. Javascript cannot control this, however, their display driver probably can (or settings in their browser).

Answer 2

as long as you know the x and y position that falls on the particular monitor you can do:

var x = 0;
var y = 0;
var myWin = window.open(''+self.location,'mywin','left='+x+',top='+y+',width=500,height=500,toolbar=1,resizable=0');

Answer 3

You can't specify the monitor, but you can specify the position of the popup window as being relative to the where the click caused the window to popup.

Use the getMouseXY() function to get values to pass as the left and top args to the window.open() method. (the left and top args only work with V3 and up browsers).

window.open docs: http://www.javascripter.net/faq/openinga.htm

function getMouseXY( e ) {
    if ( event.clientX ) { // Grab the x-y pos.s if browser is IE.
        CurrentLeft = event.clientX + document.body.scrollLeft;
        CurrentTop  = event.clientY + document.body.scrollTop;
    }
    else {  // Grab the x-y pos.s if browser isn't IE.
        CurrentLeft = e.pageX;
        CurrentTop  = e.pageY;
    }  
    if ( CurrentLeft < 0 ) { CurrentLeft = 0; };
    if ( CurrentTop  < 0 ) { CurrentTop  = 0; };  

    return true;
}

Answer 4

If you know the resolution of each monitor, you could estimate this. A bad idea for a public website, but might be useful if you know (for some odd reason) that this scenario will always apply.

Relative position to the mouse (as said above) or to the original browser window could also be useful, Though you'd have to suppose the user uses the browser maximized (which is not necessarily true).