I am writing an intranet application and am considering the use of a pop up window. I am not worried about accessibility since it's an intranet app.
The scenario is such as I need to be able to have the same code be used in a server page as well as in the middle of a process; which is why I decided when using it in the middle of the process, it's best to have it as a pop up window to running out of the real estate on the screen.
Any thoughts on this? I am hesitant to use a pop up window in such a manner as I usually only use it for error messages.
I don't completely understand what you're trying to do, but I think a popup window might be somewhat of an issue if the user's browser automatically blocks popup windows. Plus, if you were trying to run a process in the popup window, the user could close it and no longer have a way to check on the process.
Would it be possible to use Ajax to call back to a web service that gives the page information about the process? You could give the user a way to make the Ajax call to check on the status of the process or just have it continually polling in the background.
Edit:
You said you weren't too familiar with Ajax. For the most part, there are libraries to handle all the of hard details. I'll recommend jQuery because that's what I've been using for a while now.
If you go the Ajax route you'll be able to contain everything on one page and make the updates you need to make when the Ajax call is successful. Depending on how you write the code, it should be pretty reusable if you do it right. It really depends on how specific the your needs on each page.
Take a look at the jQuery documentation though. It may have what you need already built into it. Otherwise, someone else might be able to suggest some reasons why their favorite JavaScript library works better for what you're trying to do.
I think you might want to do something like this:
Inside of the parent page:
<input id="btnShowModal" runat="server" type="button" value='Show Modal' onclick="ShowModal()" />
function ShowModal()
{
var retVal = window.showModalDialog("MyPopup.aspx?param1=value","","center=yes;dialogWidth=200px;dialogHeight=200px;status:0;help:0")
if(retVal != "" && retVal != undefined)
{
//This code will be executed when the modal popup is closed, retVal will contain the value assigned to window.returnValue
}
}
Inside of the modal popup:
<input id="btnSave" runat="server" type="button" value='Save' onclick="Save()" />
function Save()
{
window.returnValue = "Whatever you want returned to the parent here"
window.close()
}
The usual argument against popup windows is that they are unreliable. The user may have disabled script initiated popups, I know I have.
In a controlled environment, such as an inranet, you may be able to be guaranteed that this is not the case, but even so, why risk it, there is an alternative.
Instead of popping up a new window just insert a new, absolutely positioned <div> into the document and insert your content into that using ajax or even an <iframe>. There are lots of examples/libraries on the web.
Thickbox for jQuery for example. There are of course scripts that don't require libraries.
I generally use a div with a z-index and absolute positioning; the .show() can be written and called on demand, it would have a button to .close(), and AJAX can make it seem modal so it must be clicked to close if you so desire. Then again, I hate messageboxes.
I was trying to avoid AJAX, simply because I have never used and don't have the time frame to learn it now. However, I am not totally opposed to it.
In short what I need to do is for the pop up window interact back with the page. Imagine that on the page I am building the links of the chain. Each link has unique properties. When user clicks on "ADD LINK" button, I was thinking have a pop up window with the little form and a Save button. The only issue with this is that a pop up needs to interact with the page; we need to know when something has been saved or not saved.
A div on the same page is one way. A pop up is yet another way. Another catch is that this code (adding new link) needs to be reusable, because I am also going to have a page that just creates new links.
Related
I cannot seem to get Chrome to pop up an "alert" page. The alert page has code in it, so it can't really be a DIV or I would just do it that way. It worked for many years, but likely do to a Chrome update it will no longer function. Still works fine in IE11, though.
The following code is used to pop up an "alert" page when there is an alert that is queried from a Database. It has always worked until recently (15 years and running)
CODE:
ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(GetType(Page), "Alarm", "<script language='javascript'>window.showModalDialog('Alarm.aspx?ID=" & AlarmID & "', null, 'dialogWidth=460px;dialogHeight=310px;status=no;resizable=yes');document.frmA.submit();</script>")
I've tried a few things like windows.open and creating a hidden button on the asp.net page and then using the click event. Nothing works. I do not see a blocked popup in Chrome and I have even went into settings and did the following:
Set Safe Browsing to "No Protection"
Set allow pop-ups and redirects on the server name (http://servername and http://localhost)
As noted, near all browsers quite much have clamped down on popup windows. this makes things more difficult for web developers.
There are two good approaches. one I don't fancy at all is using bootstrap dialogs, but they tend to "sort of work all on their own" kind of deal based on class settings for divs etc. - really hard to debug.
Since near all sites these days include jQuery for your js code, then I quite much hands down recommend you introduce jquery.UI. It has a whole slew of nice things such as date pickers etc. But it also has a rather nice dialog pop option. They just work, and when you code them up? They follow "normal" like code approaches.
it not quite clear if your message/dialog pops after say a button click (and post back), and the at the end of that process, you need/want some dialog message to display. But all in all, I would high recommend jQuery.UI for this dialog/message that you need.
jQuery.UI in most cases expects the content you want to "display/pop" exists in a simple div in the current existing page. However, it also works VERY well if you supply the dialog another existing web page. The only REAL big issue to keep in mind? That dialog page you pop cannot handle multiple post-backs. (so, some buttons, or ONE post back in that dialog is fine - but you ONLY get the ONE post-back.
So, if that page display allows some input, or some interaction and ONLY requires ONE post-back, then jQuery.UI is again great. If that pop page requires several buttons and several post-backs, then you are in for a world of pain and hurt - jQuery.UI dialogs (like most) cannot survive or handle multiple postbacks. Any post-back means the dialog closes (collapses). So in those cases, you have to adopt ajax calls (web methods) if you need/have/want that page to have more then one active post-back button or event.
So, you could have/place a script in even your master page, and little function code stub that your register script can call.
Or, I suppose you could inject the whole script, but the script would look like this:
So, the pop page actualy is SHOVED into a div. So we have a div that "holds" the page.
The jQuery.UI code script then looks like this:
<div id="poppagearea">
</div>
<script>
function showpage() {
var mydiv = $('#poppagearea');
mydiv.dialog({
autoOpen: false, modal: true, title: 'My cool other page', width: '30%',
position: { my: 'top', at: 'top+150' },
buttons: {
'ok': function () {
mydiv.dialog('close');
alert('user click ok');
},
'cancel': function () {
mydiv.dialog('close');
alert('user click cancel');
}
}
});
mydiv.load('Default.aspx');
// Open the dialog
mydiv.dialog('open');
}
So, in above, we loaded "default.aspx" into that dialog and thus displayed it on the page.
So, I would consider jQuery.UI - but it does mean adopting a new js library into your existing project.
The pop page does gray out the full page, and you do get a title bar, and your own ok, cancel button. The above thus looks like this:
So, it does a great job - but as noted, that page can only have one post-back, and it can't be a general working aspx page with lots of buttons and post backs - but it will render and display rather well.
So I would like to be able to have a print button for entries in our database so users can print an entry via a print friendly "form".
My thought was to create a separate page, add labels and have those labels pull the relevant information.
I know I can add the open widget information via this code:
app.datasources.ModelName.selectKey(widget.datasource.item._key);
app.showPage(app.pages.TestPrint);
But I'm running into a few problems:
I can't get the page to open in a new window. Is this possible?
window.open(app.pages.TestPrint);
Just gives me a blank page. Does the browser lose the widget source once the new window opens?
I can't get the print option (either onClick or onDataLoad) to print JUST the image (or widget). I run
window.print();
And it includes headers + scroll bars. Do I need to be running a client side script instead?
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
To get exactly what you'd want you'd have to do a lot of work.
Here is my suggested, simpler answer:
Don't open up a new tab. If you use showPage like you mention, and provide a "back" button on the page to go back to where you were, you'll get pretty much everything you need. If you don't want the back to show up when you print, then you can setVisibility(false) on the button before you print, then print, then setVisibility(true).
I'll give a quick summary of how you could do this with a new tab, but it's pretty involved so I can't go into details without trying it myself. The basic idea, is you want to open the page with a full URL, just like a user was navigating to it.
You can use #TestPrint to indicate which page you want to load. You also need the URL of your application, which as far as I can remember is only available in a server-side script using the Apps Script method: ScriptApp.getService().getUrl(). On top of this, you'll probably need to pass in the key so that your page knows what data to load.
So given this, you need to assemble a url by calling a server script, then appending the key property to it. In the end you want a url something like:
https://www.script.google.com/yourappaddress#TestPage?key=keyOfYourModel.
Then on TestPage you need to read the key, and load data for that key. (You can read the key using google.script.url).
Alternatively, I think there are some tricks you can play by opening a blank window and then writing directly to its DOM, but I've never tried that, and since Apps Script runs inside an iframe I'm not sure if it's possible. If I get a chance I'll play with it and update this answer, but for your own reference you could look here: create html page and print to new tab in javascript
I'm imagining something like that, except that your page an write it's html content. Something like:
var winPrint = window.open('', '_blank', 'left=0,top=0,width=800,height=600,toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,status=0');
winPrint.document.write(app.pages.TestPage.getElement().innerHTML);
winPrint.document.close();
winPrint.focus();
winPrint.print();
winPrint.close();
Hope one of those three options helps :)
So here is what I ended up doing. It isn't elegant, but it works.
I added a Print Button to a Page Fragment that pops up when a user edits a database entry.
Database Edit Button code:
app.datasources.ModelName.selectKey(widget.datasource.item._key);
app.showDialog(app.pageFragments.FragmentName);
That Print Button goes to a different (full) Page and closes the Fragment.
Print Button Code:
app.datasources.ModelName.selectKey(widget.datasource.item._key);
app.showPage(app.pages.ModelName_Print);
app.closeDialog();
I made sure to make the new Print Page was small enough so that Chrome fits it properly into a 8.5 x 11" page (728x975).
I then created a Panel that fills the page and populated the page with Labels
#datasource.item.FieldName
I then put the following into the onDataLoad for the Panel
window.print();
So now when the user presses the Print Button in the Fragment they are taken to this new page and after the data loads they automatically get a print dialog.
The only downside is that after printing the user has to use a back button I added to return to the database page.
1.
As far as I know, you cannot combine window.open with app.pages.*, because
window.open would require url parameter at least, while app.pages.* is essentially an internal routing mechanism provided by App Maker, and it returns page object back, suitable for for switching between pages, or opening dialogs.
2.
You would probably need to style your page first, so like it includes things you would like to have printed out. To do so please use #media print
ex: We have a button on the page and would like to hide it from print page
#media print {
.app-NewPage-Button1 {
display : none;
}
}
Hope it helps.
1. Here is how it is done, in a pop up window, without messing up the current page (client script):
function print(widget, title){
var content=widget.getElement().innerHTML;
var win = window.open('', 'printWindow', 'height=600,width=800');
win.document.write('<head><title>'+title+'/title></head>');
win.document.write('<body>'+content+'</body>');
win.document.close();
win.focus();
win.print();
win.close();
}
and the onclick handler for the button is:
print(widget.root.descendants.PageFragment1, 'test');
In this example, PageFragment1 is a page fragment on the current page, hidden by adding a style with namehidden with definition .hidden{display:none;} (this is different than visible which in App Maker seems to remove the item from the DOM). Works perfectly...
2. You cannot open pages from the app in another tab. In principle something like this would do it:
var w=window.parent.parent;
w.open(w.location.protocol+'//'+w.location.host+w.location.pathname+'#PrintPage', '_blank');
But since the app is running in frame nested two deep from the launching page, and with a different origin, you will not be able to access the url that you need (the above code results in a cross origin frame access error). So you would have to hard code the URL, which changes at deployment, so it gets ugly very fast. Not that you want to anyway, the load time of an app should discourage you from wanting to do that anyway.
I would like to open a document after my ASP.NET page loads in a separate window. I would like to do this with the document not attempt to be blocked by a pop-up blocked. I tried and I am getting the prompt to ask if I would like to allow the popup. Is the best way to do this using a timer control or is there a better way in the lifecylce?
I have tried several events, but they are all launching the document prior to page load.
Fundamentally what you're trying to do is exactly the thing that pop-up blockers are designed to prevent - load a pop-up window without an explicit user interaction. There may be various tricks you could use to get around certain particular pop-up blockers, but you'll never be able to solve this in the general case.
The best solution is to have a link on your page to open the document in question in a new window. Pop-up blockers do not prevent links targeted to a new window.
I use
function openpage(page) {
if (document.getElementById('hf_open').value == 1) {
openChild(page, 'nueva');
document.getElementById('hf_open').value = 0;
}
}
and in the body onload ="openpage('whateverpage.aspx');"
and in an ASP.NET event I set if I want the popup to be open or not a particular time by setting hf_open to 1 if the pop up has to be opened at that time.
In Internet Explorer 7 with pop up blocker: turn on checked - it works.
How are users getting to your page? You could place the popup JavaScript in the link that takes users to your page.
You could use the onload JavaScript event.
function open_page()
{
popupWin = window.open('windowURL','windowName', ' resizable,dependent,status,width=500,height=400,left=0,top=0')
}
Then have the following body tag
<body onload="open_page()">
However, this won't get around your popup blocking issue.
Scenario is : old site which has lots of JS code already written. If user want to change all the alert messages to new age jazzy Div based alert which are very common using JQuery, YUI, Prototype... etc.
There are mainly tree JS dialogs
1. alert
To changes this its simple we just have to write new function which will show the div popup and show the message, after that override the window.alert
function showDivAlert(strMessage){
//div popup logic and code
}
window.alert = showDivAlert;
2. prompt
This too look easy to write function to accept the string and show the text box for input value. Now as return action is based on the click of "OK" button life is easy here.
function shoDivPromp(strMessage){
//div pop up to show the text box and accept input from the user
}
window.prompt = shoDivPromp;
3. confirm
Now above two were easy to override and modify the default dialogs but there is complication with the confirm.
However default JS confirm dialog stops JS execution and when user click OK or Cancel execution is resumed by determining the return value (true/false). But if we user div popup the execution is not stopped which is problem. We can still implement the confirm but in that case we have to bind methods for OK and CANCEL case which will be attached to OK and CANCEL button. With this function signature will be like.
function newConfirm(msg, fun OkAction(), fun CancelAction)
Now this is problem that this cant help me change the confirm dialog across the site as we did with alert();
Question
I am not sure whether its possible or not to achieve but i think can be using some JS pattern. So let me know if its possible.
Now this is problem that this cant help me change the confirm dialog across the site as we did with alert();
That's correct. It's not possible to reproduce the synchronous nature of the alert/confirm/prompt functions in native JavaScript. There is the non-standard method showModalDialog which can do it using a separate pop-up document, but it's not supported by all browsers and it's generally considered highly undesirable.
So the plug-in-replacement strategy isn't going to work. You are going to have to change every place you called these methods in the rest of the script.
The usual pattern is to do it using inline anonymous functions, to preserve the local variables using a closure, eg. replace:
function buttonclick() {
var id= this.id;
if (confirm('Are you sure you want to frob '+id+'?'))
frob(id);
wipe(id);
}
with:
function buttonclick() {
var id= this.id;
myConfirm('Are you sure you want to frob '+id+'?', function(confirmed) {
if (confirmed)
frob(id);
wipe(id);
});
}
If you need this to be preserved you would need to look at a further nested closure or function.bind to do it. If you have your call to confirm in a loop things get considerably more difficult.
Obviously you also have to ensure that critical global state doesn't change whilst the confirm box is up. Usually this risk is minimised by greying out the rest of the page with an overlay to stop clicks getting through. However if you have timeouts they can still fire.
All 3 methods actually stop js execution, not just the confirm, because they're all modal dialogs. Personally, I would try to keep everything as asynchronous as possible as modal dialogs prevent interaction with the current document.
Your best bet is to use callback functions from the new confirm popup as you suggested yourself.
I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what you want to achieve. It sounds like you want to do something like the following:
Run some javascript code
Display a "confirm" box
Wait until the ok button or cancel button is clicked
Continue code when user clicks ok, return when user clicks cancel.
The reason you want to do this is that overriding the function with something that makes use of callbacks would require rewriting each section of code that uses the confirm function. If you want my advice, I would go ahead and rewrite the code so that it performs asynchronously. There's no way you can delay script execution without locking up the document which includes the OK and Cancel actions of your dialog.
if you changed the roles Alert / Prompt / Confirm. slows the execution pending user interaction to run the following code.
Overriding these functions, the code continues its execution.
To achieve this you have to modify each part of the code and work as if you were with asynchronous functions.
Then you can use any plugin for windows as sexy-alert-box, and overwrite Alert / Prompt / Confirm
The function signature would simply be:
function newConfirm(msg, okAction, cancelAction);
and would be used as:
function newConfirm(msg, okAction, cancelAction){
var ok = doWhateverPromptIsNecessary();
if (ok) {
okAction();
} else {
cancelAction();
}
}
That is, to pass function "pointers" in to a function as arguments, simply pass in the function name without the (). The function signature is the same.
I'm showing a modal dialog via "window.showModalDialog(..." which happens in a vbscript function (the page shown is aspx). I'd like to do some resizing of the window based on the number of rows in a datatable that's coming back. So naturally I go to register a startup script that resizes the window based on the number of rows. Well, that didn't work, so I tried to register a script that just showed a msgbox.
The code looks like (in the OnLoad event handler):
if (!this.ClientScript.IsStartupScriptRegistered(typeof(MyPageClassName), "hello"))
{
this.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(typeof(MyPageClassName), "hello",
#"<script language=vbscript>
sub fnWindowOnLoad()
MsgBox ""hello""
end sub
<script>", false);
}
if (!this.ClientScript.IsStartupScriptRegistered(typeof(MyPageClassName), "hello"))
{
throw new Exception("Failed to load script");
}
To me it looks like this should work and show a message box that says "hello" when the page loads (I've got the window's onload event set to fnWindowOnLoad). But what happens is nothing, no exception, no alert. I've tried every Type I could think of in the typeof call. Nothing seems to work. The only thing I can think of is that since the dialog is a modal ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript won't run properly. But that doesn't make any sense to me.
I put the MsgBox "hello" call into my script block directly and the alert showed, so it's possible. But I need to modify some arguments in the code behind so I have to use RegisterStartupScript as far as I can tell.
Have you tried opening your window via window.open() rather than window.showModalDialog()? I've seen some postings on the web about incompatibilities between showModalDialog() and RegisterStartupScript.
showModalDialog() is an IE only method, so it's not recommended anyway. I know it's convenient because it returns a value, but there are various ways to simulate this functionality.
Edit: The other problem with showModalDialog() is that IE often caches the results. This means that if one time you calling the dialog, you do not resize it, then another time you do, then 2nd time might get your the first cached dialog. A way to get around this is to add a unique querystring at the end. Like MyDialog.aspx?q=320934 (randomly generated or generated based on server tics).
The solution for this was to have a script that read a value out of a hidden field and then resized the dialog. The value was set on the Page_Load. Using RegisterStartupScript never seemed to work, neither did RegisterClientScript, so I'm pretty sure modal dialog and RegisterXxx don't get along. Need to use window.dialogHeight & window.dialogWidth in the vbscript.