How to open a new window or tab via javascript in windows phone 7 browser

Question

Is it possible to open a new window or tab via javascript in Windows Phone 7 browser?

window.open does not appear to be supported nor does target='_blank' .

Am I missing something here? This basic feature works just fine on iphone and android. Any ideas on how I can get this working in Windows Phone 7?

Answer 1

On Windows Phone 7 this is not possible programmatically. It's all in the users hand.

To cite a Microsoft employee :

"A user can open a link in a new Tab by tapping and holding the link to get the context menu but an anchor or scripts request to target a new window is ignored.

There are several reasons for this:

• Cross-window communications are not supported.
• Windows Phone only has one instance of the browser so new "windows" have to be opened as Tab's.
• The browser experience is full screen so the user has no good visual cue that they have moved to a new Tab unless they explicity request it.
• Navigating "back" in a new Tab exits the browser which would be confusing to the user if they did not know a new Tab was created."

Answer 2

If you are trying to add this feature for in-ap browser control, I can suggest you one way.

You have to inject a java-script on every webpage the browser control is able to load the page successfully. In the java-script use window.extern.notify to invoke the ScriptNotify function in your code behind. On the detection of the appropriate message create a new instance of browser control and add it to an array or list. Thereby you can emulate the new tab feature for in-app browser control.

the JS code to be injected may be like this String NEW_TAB_FUNCTION = "window.open = function(__msg){window.external.notify('addnewtab');};";

Which can be injected using browser.InvokeScript("eval", NEW_TAB_FUNCTION);

In ScriptNotify check for addnewtab (keep IsScriptEnabled = True )

    void WebBrowser_ScriptNotify(object sender, NotifyEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.Value == "addnewtab")
        {   
            //do work here
        }
    }

Note that I have overridden the window.open function in the JS with a function which will be injected every time on a new webpage in order to get notified of user input.

Also note this works only for WebBrowser Control and not external browser.

Answer 3

My workaround this issue is simple:

window.open

returns null if failed, so in that case I open it in the same window:

var win = window.open(href, '_blank');
    if(!win || win==null){
        window.location.href = href;
    }else{
        win.focus();     
    }

which is a good practice to have a fallback anyway...