Multi Windowing on a Java Web project

Question

I have an EJB 2.1 Project (Actually, it must be migrated into EJB 3.1 :-))
Currently it supports only one window. it means the user should work on a window. It is because of the variables, used as session variables. (Last Search Criteria, last used id, etc...).

I want to make it possible to open two or more tabs in for example Firefox and work parallel. If the user is on the same tab, the variables should be kept only for that tab. Only global variables can be valid for all tabs.
How can i approach to this problem.??
Any documentation to understand multiwindow will be also helpful.
Or any other idea or experiences about multiwindow web project is also welcome.

Answer 1

There isn't any built-in way to deal with this in either browsers or any EJB that I am aware of. Other web app frameworks have the concept of Web Flows that are series of connected actions that can handle multiple flows in different tabs of the same browsers, so you may wish to start looking there.

In a nutshell, they create their own "cookies" that the application controls, not the browser itself. These "application cookies" are then used to stash chunks of information related to the current set of operations, much like a session.

These sorts of things are often kicked off by the user clicking a link that opens in a "new window" (or tab) that notifies the application (via a page hit or an ajax call) that a new "work session" is being opened and gets the inner-session set up.