Bateman27 said:
Hi, don't know if this is the right place for this but wondered
if anybody can help. When I try to open a picture on gettyimages,
or a new chat window on MSN (either by clicking on the image,
or on the MSN username) nothing happens. If, in gettyimages,
I right click on the image and select to open in a new window
a new browser launches starting with "javascript:OpenChildWindow"
but comes up as page can not be displayed.
Whether this is the right place or not is questionable, and your problem
will not be solved here, though you may understand more as a result of
asking.
The - javascritp:OpenChildWindow - is a javascript pseudo-protocol URL
(you are probably miss-reporting it as without at leas a pair of
parenthesise on the end it would not be expected to do anything, it is
more likely - javascript:OpenChildWindow(); -). Competent web developers
don't use javascript pseudo-protocol URLs (for anything but debugging)
as their activation has undesirable negative consequences of a number of
browsers (including the popular IE6) and they break useful browser GUI
features such as the ability to open a link in a new browser window (as
you have observed).
On the other hand, when you click on a javascript pseudo-protocol link
the javascript specified is executed, and so should have some
consequences. So why doesn't this work. The first candidate for blame
must be MSN. If its web developers where competent they would not be
using javascript pseudo-protocol URLs in the first place, and that
incompetence may run to writing scripts that do not take into account
some aspect of the configuration of your browser, resulting in the code
erroring-out (and so not doing anything). The manifestation of that
would be a little yellow triangle appearing in the lower left corner of
IE's window (left side of the status bar). Double clicking that triangle
brings up a javascript error-report (which does not help you at all,
beyond assigning blame).
(Microsoft have always tended to employ a very low calibre of
web-developer, for example, if you visit MSDN with Internet explorer you
frequently see javascript error reports stating that -
parentElement.parentElement is null or not an object, where -
parentElement - is IE specific code, which means that their developers
are engaging in the relatively trivial task of writing for a single
known environment (IE) and are still not capable of creating an error
free script,)
Another candidate as the cause of your problem are "internet security"
programs running on your computer (the type that act as
content-inserting/re-writing proxies). In some configurations these can
inset code into the incoming pages that replace the - window.open -
method with a version that will not open new browser windows (pop-up, or
advertising blocking). The symptom of this that can be looked for is
that if you use the - View->Source - item in IE's menu to look at the
source of public Internet web pages you will find that they all contain
an _identical_ block of javascript code near the top (regardless of
which web site you visit). This would be (some of) the code inserted by
the proxy. (you would expect some sites to use identical blocks of code
in all their pages, but not different sites).
If your problem is a proxy then you should be able to turn off its
pop-up/advertising blocking in its configuration (or turn it of for MSN
only). Though ultimately you can blame MSN for this also as they have no
excuse for not expecting Internet users to be running Internet security
programs (and so should see the implications and accommodate them in
their design).
I don't know if this is any use but in Internet Options
I have Java (SUN) use JRE 1.5.0_0.9 for <applet> ticked?
<snip>
That is irrelevant as javascript and Java are two totally different
languages using two totally different sub-systems when running inside a
browser.
Ricahrd.
