Question

Is there a way to programmatically instruct IE8 to open a popup in a new window rather than a new tab? I know that IE supports modal windows but I have a bunch of legacy code with ordinary popups.

Update:

I am using Javascript’s window.open() method to create popup windows. However, when a user has their IE8 settings set to “Always open popups in a new tab”, the popup is launched in a new tab rather than a new window.

Answer 1

Since no one else is chiming in… After doing further research, it seems that you cannot force a pop-up to open into a new window when an IE8 user has the following browser setting enabled: Tools>>Internet Options>>Tabs>>When a pop-up is encountered:>>Always open pop-ups in a new tab.

Since I am in an Intranet environment, I have the option of locking down a users IE settings to either “Let Internet Explorer decide how pop-ups should open” or “Always open pop-ups in a new window”.

I don’t really care to exercise the above option so in order to get the desired user experience, I will resort to making one of the following code changes:

1. Convert existing pop-ups to IE specific Modal Dialogs using the showModalDialog() method.

2. Convert existing pop-ups to Javascript Modal Dialogs using jqModal or some other jQuery plug-in.