Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / JavaScript / February 2005

Modern browsers do not allow a popup when you close the window.

Tell them that Windows SP2 allows the user to block pop windows.

You could implement your own close button that does a popup.  Ask your
customer in a few days whether they are still using your close button or
the browser's close button.

Why does your customer want to do this? Maybe there is a more customer
friendly way of doing what they want.

I a few years back, I frequented this gaming site.  They put popup
windows when I left the site. Every time you left a window, you got one
or two more.  I had to reboot the pc to get out of the site.  I stopped
visiting the site until I got a web browser with a popup blocker.  

Robert

Then educate your clients to the stupidity of what they want.

How do you propose catching the URL if I type it in the address bar? You
can't.

Now, if I am on page1 of the site, and I have page14 in my favorites,
and I click the favorites (in IE) to go to that page, you have
absolutely *no* way to know where I went. Now, do I get the popup or
not? I left the "site" by not clicking a link in the page, yet I didn't
leave the site.

It's not lousy, its stupid.

What Randy says is true, you can't capture the URL in the address bar
as it is typed.

However, there is a basic "Exit Popup" script.  The best solution is
not full proof.  It is to write a popup script like this

var q = true;
function WaitDontLeave(){
window.open('http://whatever.com');
//other popup code
}

then your onUnload attribute in the body tag will be:
onUnload="WaitDontLeave()"  the function call to your popup.

Now, the bad part is that for every href tag on the page, every form,
any tag that a visitor can click on to visit the next page in your site
must have this onClick event handler included in it.

<a href="/myfolder.nextpage.html" onClick="q=false">

Depending on the size of the site, it can be a pain.  If you have a
global template, you can write a looping script to dynamically add the
onclick event handler to the tags: "a, input, ect...).

The downside is that this method, and no know method can prevent the
popups from launching if the visitor hits the BACK button, or types in
the URL from scratch, because these do not ever change the global
varialbe to false.

I have spent years in Ecommerce, and this script is used quite often
with much success.  However, we usually limit it's use to just one
page, the Shopping Cart page.  The thought is, if they don't move on to
the Credit Card auth page, then give them the popup with a incentive to
complete the sale.  I might suggest a chat with your client about
limiting it's use to the page, or pages they most want the visitors to
take a further action on.  If they don't move ahead through the normal
channels (links) then give them the popup.

Hope that was helpful.

Jeff