Hiding the toolbar, menubar, etc?

[Code Monkee]

How can the toolbar and menubar be hidden in IE?

When opening the window via javascript I can specify
'toolbar=no,menubar=no', which works fine.
However if the window already exists how can I remove them? If the browser
is Netscape I can use javascript:
window.toolbar.visible = false;
window.menubar.visible = false;
but IE produces the error:
"'window.toolbar.visible' is null or not an object".
Is there a different window attribute or method I should use, or do I need
to do this with VBScript?

Thanks.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

How can the toolbar and menubar be hidden in IE?

Is there a different window attribute or method I should use

There is no method you should use. People tend to like their toolbars.

 

[spaghetti]

How can the toolbar and menubar be hidden in IE? [in the main window]

You can't, and why would you want to? This would make your visitors simply
*hate* you. They wouldn't be able to leave your site. They wouldn't be able
to go back to what they were doing. They wouldn't be able to open their
Favorites. It would be a bloody mess. Your visitors would probably storm to
your house with rope, straw, and torches.

Is there a different window attribute or method I should use, or do I need
to do this with VBScript?

Irrelevant, both JScript and VBScript use the same DOM.

 

[Andrew Davidson]

This would make your visitors simply
*hate* you. They wouldn't be able to leave your site. They wouldn't be able
to go back to what they were doing. They wouldn't be able to open their
Favorites. It would be a bloody mess. Your visitors would probably storm to
your house with rope, straw, and torches.

I'll bring the rope. Assemble up by the old mill at midnight. We gotta fight for
them toolbars boys.......

 

[Mark Parnell]

I'll bring the rope. Assemble up by the old mill at midnight. We
gotta fight for them toolbars boys.......

I'll be there. But keep it quiet - we don't want them to know we are
coming... ;-)

 

[spaghetti]

I'll be there. But keep it quiet - we don't want them to know we are
coming... ;-)

Ooookay, I put together a list of things we need. Let's make sure we do this
proper, alright?

- Duct tape
- Pickaxe
- Shania Twain CD
- Rubber hose
- Dish to pass
- Paper plates
- Napkins
- Can of gasoline
- Blow torch

 

[Mark Parnell]

Ooookay, I put together a list of things we need. Let's make sure we
do this proper, alright?

- Duct tape
- Pickaxe
- Shania Twain CD
- Rubber hose
- Dish to pass
- Paper plates
- Napkins
- Can of gasoline
- Blow torch

You forgot the earplugs so *we* don't have to listen to Shania Twain. ;-)
Other than that, looks like we're set.

 

[Andrew Davidson]

How can the toolbar and menubar be hidden in IE?

How can I get into your house and hide all the furniture?

 

[DU]

How can I get into your house and hide all the furniture?

How can a radio station hide all the other knobs and buttons by which an
user could choose the volume setting, radio station and other
customization features available on a radio?

How could a tv broadcasting corporation implement a device working via
waves which would prevent listeners from going to the bathroom (or
leaving the living room) while advertisements are playing?

How can an application take over full and absolute control over (and
impose brutally its preferences) its users, customers via the
application, software, device which is supposed to promote its product,
respect the intelligence of its users, visitors, listeners, customers?

How can an application impose brutally its preferences to its users,
customers via the application which is supposed to promote its product,
respect the intelligence of its users, visitors, listeners, customers?

DU

 

[Talc Ta Matt]

For all you people bashing this guy for wanting to do this, there are many
legit situations where it can be useful.

I've seen this on some photo art sites. Instead of popping the photo up in the
same window, they use a bare bones popup that's stripped of everything and
resized to the exact photo dimentions.

It's also very useful to use with a sized help screen popup.

As for it not working in all browsers, the only mainstream browser that matters
is IE, and that's what nearly everyone uses (most web stats don't go below
95%). The rest is mostly Netscape, and those users obviously don't tweak it
like Mozilla users do. Mozilla and Opera are primarily utilized by developers,
and make up an extremely small portion of browsers in use.

 

[rf]

For all you people bashing this guy for wanting to do this, there are many
legit situations where it can be useful.

Very very few such situations. About the only one I can think of is an
intranet application and if this is the case then the OP sould have stated
this up front.

I've seen this on some photo art sites. Instead of popping the photo up in the
same window, they use a bare bones popup that's stripped of everything and
resized to the exact photo dimentions.

You might think so. The rest of us do not.

It's also very useful to use with a sized help screen popup.

Bullshit. A help screen is just like any other window, it should have its
normal chrome. And why a popup help screen. If a page needs a help screen to
use it then it is badly designed.

As for it not working in all browsers, the only mainstream browser that matters
is IE, and that's what nearly everyone uses
Rubbish.

(most web stats don't go below
95%). The rest is mostly Netscape, and those users obviously don't tweak it
like Mozilla users do. Mozilla and Opera are primarily utilized by developers,
and make up an extremely small portion of browsers in use.

Who cares. Removing the chrome from a viewers browser is a shit of a thing
to do. However that is just MNSHO. You are entitled to yours and I will stay
far away from your sites.

Cheers
Richard.

 

[DU]

For all you people bashing this guy for wanting to do this, there are many
legit situations where it can be useful.

Go ahead and name these. I'll forward these to Opera software dev. team
and to Mozilla.org dev. team and to Safari, Konqueror, J. Nielsen, IBM,
Microsoft user experience team, etc... They all must be wrong and you
must be right. So, go ahead and list them one by one.

I've seen this on some photo art sites.

Be explicit for starters. Name those art sites and their urls: they must
be good ones, for sure.

Instead of popping the photo up in the

same window, they use a bare bones popup that's stripped of everything and
resized to the exact photo dimentions.

Wait! Are we still talking about popup or are we talking about
non-window.open-ed() windows here? I asked this because the original
poster wrote about non-window.open-ed() windows. Would you like me to
quote the original poster here? He was clearly referring to menubar and
toolbar of non-window.open-en() windows, you see.

Here's a simple question for you. How can an MSIE 6 for windows user
hide the menubar? That should be easy to do ... since no remote webpage
is involve, no script needed? If an user can not remove, hide by himself
the menubar from his MSIE 6 for windows GUI, then why and how come a web
developer should be able to do this in window.open-ed() popups? That
seems absolutely illogical to me.

It's also very useful to use with a sized help screen popup.

How do you remove default browser css declarations like
body {margin:15px 10px;} in MSIE 6 for Windows
body {margin:8xp;} in Mozilla-based browsers
body {padding:8px;} in Opera 7
when you make a call like this:
window.open("path/filename.gif", "", "with=400,height=200")
when the width of the image is 400 and its height is 200? FYI, it's
impossible.

To remove these padding or margin, you absolutely need to embed images
into an html file.

How do you code around an user having the automatic image resizing
feature ON like in MSIE 6 for windows and Mozilla 1.4 and NS 7.1?

As for it not working in all browsers, the only mainstream browser that matters
is IE, and that's what nearly everyone uses (most web stats don't go below
95%).

How many of these use proxomitron or other software killers to prevent
popup from being so anti-user?

The rest is mostly Netscape, and those users obviously don't tweak it

like Mozilla users do.

Things are changing slowly but steadily in that respect. NS 7.1 is now
able to restore window resizability in a popup which was created with
"resizable=no". Firebird too. Soon every browser (thanks to browser
manufacturers themselves) will give the user absolute control and the
last word/veto on browser window functionalities (like resizability,
scrolbars presence if needed) and presence of toolbars.

Even W3C supports this way of thinking in numerous of its TRs.

Mozilla and Opera are primarily utilized by developers,

and make up an extremely small portion of browsers in use.

So what? Should normal users suffer from poorly respectful webpages,
dominating web designers willing to control their browser toolbars?
Where are your arguments? Be explicit.

DU

 

[DU]

For all you people bashing this guy for wanting to do this, there are many
legit situations where it can be useful.

I've seen this on some photo art sites. Instead of popping the photo up in the
same window, they use a bare bones popup that's stripped of everything and
resized to the exact photo dimentions.

It's also very useful to use with a sized help screen popup.

Many users over 40 years old,
{
you know, the kind of people who have worked all their life and now they
have enough money to buy products on the web, surf on e-commerce sites
}
have lower eye vision and need to increase the size of fonts via
View/Text Zoom in Mozilla-based browsers and View/Text size in MSIE for
Windows.
Now, many young over-excessively zealously controling and dominator-like
web designers use popups with "resizable=no,scrollbars=no" in their
windowFeatures list string of the window.open() calls not knowing that
increased font size will make the content overflow the rigid popup
dimensions they ordered in the window.open() call. The result of all
this: the buyer, the customer, you know, the guy with the credit card
number and holding the credit card, ready to buy, will not be able to
buy the product because he can not see the price, he sees no scrollbars
so he assumes there is no content being clipped. Since he can't resize
the popup window to be sure, he closes the popup not understanding why
he can't see the prices on that site.

Every time a web designer removes browser functioanlities and toolbars,
he removes the usefulness, the worthyness, the versatility, the
usefulness of that popup window. He takes risks of making that popup
furthermore unusable, not useful, etc.. He often defeats the purpose of
the popup itself.

DU

 

[Code Monkee]

Whoa Nellie!!!
Zealots, RELAX PLEASE.

The reason I wanted to remove the toolbar and menubar is because this
particular popup is launched from a 3rd party app, so I have no control over
it's original creation state, and the one and only purpose of this popup is
for form entry and I simply wanted to increase the odds that the user
wouldn't need to scroll to view the whole form.
(All concerns about removing things from the browser should be moot, since
the purpose of this window is not to browse but to enter information into a
form. And if they want to copy the content, gee, the right mouse button lets
them do that, doesn't it? Yes it is your browser, but it's my popup!)

After all the firestorm of postings, apparently nobody knows (or is willing
to tell) how to do this!

BTW, if you plan on coming to my house with rope and gasoline you might as
well bring your crosses and bedsheets too, but I hope your ass is dog bite
and rock salt proof.

 

[Dexter J]

Salutations:

I'm not using .js anymore - I'd try giving the pop-up a target name (or
finding out what it is) then try assigning the close to the target name - I
think - I had something like it working about 3 years ago like that but I
dropped javascript to focus on actionscript and I think you are indicating
that some third party you are using is putting the form up - which may make
a close command difficult..

I started worrying (and seeing incomplete page transfers in the log here to
confirm my worries) that internal site links I wanted to display in a
stripped window weren't turning up past the 'pop-up' blockers about a year
ago which - no matter how you cut it - is very sadly what a (any) window
call has become..

--

J Dexter - webmaster - http://www.dexterdyne.org/
all tunes - no cookies no subscription no weather no ads
no news no phone in - RealAudio 8+ Required - all the Time

Radio Free Dexterdyne Top Tune o'be-do-da-day
Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls
http://www.dexterdyne.org/888/063.RAM

Whoa Nellie!!!
Zealots, RELAX PLEASE.

<snipped for length - not for spite>

 

[DU]

Whoa Nellie!!!
Zealots, RELAX PLEASE.

The reason I wanted to remove the toolbar and menubar is because this
particular popup is launched from a 3rd party app, so I have no control over
it's original creation state,

Ok. So, you want to control the browser window of your visitors, your
users and if you could, you would want to control the coding of a 3rd
party app, right?

and the one and only purpose of this popup is

for form entry and I simply wanted to increase the odds that the user
wouldn't need to scroll to view the whole form.

Ok, then increase the font size of that form and let's see how people
will scroll that form popup without scrollbars... because this kind of
scenario usually happen often to users over 40.
Why don't you send an email to the web designer of that 3rd party app?
Isn't that the coherent, consequent thing to do in order to address the
real issue?

(All concerns about removing things from the browser should be moot, since
the purpose of this window is not to browse but to enter information into a
form. And if they want to copy the content, gee, the right mouse button lets
them do that, doesn't it? Yes it is your browser, but it's my popup!)

Yeah.. but can they save the page? You know, File/Save as, File/Save
Page as...? can they print the page without the menubar? Remember that
someone in this thread said that some info could be so important that it
would require a popup just to render the info. So, why format the popup
in a way that defeats the pursued purpose of such popup then?

The bottom line is always the same. The more (toolbars, browser
functionalities) you remove from a secondary browser window (via the
window.open() call), the more you make such window useless, unworthy,
unsuitable, anti-user, the more it goes against accessibility to
content. The more (toolbars, browser functionalities) you remove from a
secondary browser window, the more you risk getting your users, your
customers, your visitors run into problems, irritations, difficulties,
fears, whatever. The more (toolbars, browser functionalities) you remove
from a secondary browser window, the more you destroy the user
experience of your site.
The fact that now browser manufacturers are giving back to users
absolute and full veto power over toolbars and browser functionalities
is a sign that your attitude does not promote the users' objective best
interests and the designers' objective best interests in such web
interaction.

After all the firestorm of postings, apparently nobody knows (or is willing
to tell) how to do this!

You never clearly explained the webpage situation; you never talked
about a form, you never talked about scrolling before, you never talked
about a 3rd party app. You only requested technical and very targeted
questions about removing the browser toolbar and menubar in an
non-window.open-ed() browser window and you got a fair, correct and
precise answer on this. In MSIE 6 for windows, it's impossible to remove
the menubar, even if the user wants to remove it, even without an http
connection, without js, even if you were going to pay hundreds of $ to
anyone who would do it.

You're the one who posted very precise and targeted questions and you're
the one who claimed to be able to remove toolbar and menubar in NS which
is simply not true: you need to get full and complete consent from the
user in a confirm popup box to do so... and why in the world would he be
willing to do that? He can View/Show-Hide toolbars as he wishes, as it
pleases without giving a web designer's scripts with unknown intents the
power over his browser window.

BTW, if you plan on coming to my house with rope and gasoline you might as
well bring your crosses and bedsheets too, but I hope your ass is dog bite
and rock salt proof.

DU

 

[DU]

Rebuttals,
1) I never once talked of removing the scrollbars, and in fact don't do
this, but people seem to like that rant.

The "etc" in your posts suggested it could have been the case.

2) Netscape (6.2.1 precisely)

For the very first time, you pinpoint the version. Very very few people
are still using NS 6.x. Why wouldn't they upgrade to NS 7.1 which has
thousands of bug fixes including security and privacy ones, including
many features? I don't know about NS 6.2.1 allowing you to turn off ,
just like that, the menubar and toolbar of users (and if this is
possible, then this is a privacy and security bug for sure because you
never should be able to do that without the users' explicit consent) but
I do know you can NOT achieve that in NS 7.x without the users fully
aware consent.

With NS 7.1, you just can NOT even turn off menubar and toolbar in popup
windows.

lets me do this, so saying NS won't is itself

simply not true.

NS 7.x does not let you do this, just like that. I doubt NS 4.x lets you
do this also.

3) Why go into all the gory and verbose details of my app, their app, your
browser, his age, blah, blah, blah, when I merely asked for the answer to
the question "How can the toolbar and menubar be hidden in IE?"?

and I'm repeating again that you got a full and complete answer. IT'S
NOT POSSIBLE in "IE". Am I loud and clear?

DU

 

[Grant Wagner]

Rebuttals,
1) I never once talked of removing the scrollbars, and in fact don't do
this, but people seem to like that rant.

The entire post wasn't directed at you. It is intended for a larger audience
consisting of people who may read your post and assume because a "professional
developer" wants to remove menu and toolbars, it's an accepted practice. Also,
as developers, the rest of us have a vested interest in promoting proper
practices. For every developer that inappropriately messes with the users'
experience, there is another user installing software or enabling features that
make it impossible for the rest of us to rely on the behaviour of these
features.

2) Netscape (6.2.1 precisely) lets me do this, so saying NS won't is itself
simply not true.

If Netscape 6.2.1 lets you do what you want, then it's a flaw in Netscape
6.2.1, not proper coding on your part. If you want your userbase to use a
crippled, bug-ridden browser based on a < 1.0 version of Mozilla so you can
remove their menu and toolbar, you are certainly free to do so.

Of course, I'd personally recommend Netscape 7.1, based on Mozilla 1.4, since
it contains less bugs and more features then 6.2.1.

3) Why go into all the gory and verbose details of my app, their app, your
browser, his age, blah, blah, blah, when I merely asked for the answer to
the question "How can the toolbar and menubar be hidden in IE?"?

The toolbar and menubar can not be hidden in the current window in Internet
Explorer. Of course, you'd have already known this if you'd checked the
documentation:

<url:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/objects/obj_clientinformation.asp
/>
<url:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/objects/obj_navigator.asp
/>
<url:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/objects/obj_window.asp
/>

No properties or methods listed that can used (even with extended security) to
remove the chrome elements you want to remove. Also, reading documentation
provides you with a way to do what you want in Netscape 7.1:

<url: http://www.mozilla.org/docs/dom/domref/dom_window_ref.html#1004028 />
specifically <url:
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/dom/domref/dom_window_ref32.html#1017467 />

"To toggle the visibility of these bars, you must either sign your scripts or
enable the appropriate privileges, as in the example above. Also be aware that
dynamically updating the visibilty of the various toolbars can change the size
of the window rather dramatically, and may affect the layout of your page."

--
| Grant Wagner <[email protected]>

* Client-side Javascript and Netscape 4 DOM Reference available at:
*
http://devedge.netscape.com/library/manuals/2000/javascript/1.3/reference/frames.html

* Internet Explorer DOM Reference available at:
*
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/dhtml_reference_entry.asp

* Netscape 6/7 DOM Reference available at:
* http://www.mozilla.org/docs/dom/domref/
* Tips for upgrading JavaScript for Netscape 6/7 and Mozilla
* http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/upgrade_2.html

 

[Andrew Davidson]

For all you people bashing this guy for wanting to do this, there are many
legit situations where it can be useful.

No there aren't.

I've seen this on some photo art sites. Instead of popping the photo up in the
same window, they use a bare bones popup that's stripped of everything and
resized to the exact photo dimentions.

But that's not what he asked about. He wants to switch off the chrome etc in the
*current* window (which may be my only one).

It's also very useful to use with a sized help screen popup.

Irrelevant. See above.

As for it not working in all browsers, the only mainstream browser that matters
is IE, and that's what nearly everyone uses (most web stats don't go below
95%). The rest is mostly Netscape, and those users obviously don't tweak it
like Mozilla users do. Mozilla and Opera are primarily utilized by developers,
and make up an extremely small portion of browsers in use.

So, we take mainstream users who don't know how to configure their brower, and
we switch off all their support mechanisms (toolbars, menus, etc). Why not just
mug them?

 

[Brian]

Ooookay, I put together a list of things we need. Let's make sure we do this
proper, alright?

- Duct tape

Hey! This ain't weapons of mass destruction, you know! :-D

I'll bring a mean dog, btw. In case the varmint tries to flee!