ShowModalDialog

I noticed that the following is an issue thru which people often run: when you show an aspx page (or any server content in general) in a dialog by mean of the javascript ShowModalDialog method, at the first postback you usually witness the instance of a second window, his time a full blown browser, holding in your output.

There is an easy workaround to the situation, but surprisingly it seems that few people knows it: so I'm posting it.

The trick is showing a static page , a simple .htm, in the ShowModalDialog call; such page should hold the active content (your .aspx) in an IFRAME. Subsequent posts will be confined inside the iframe, hence restoring the intended user exprerience.

UPDATE

J proposes a more efficient system: <base target="_self">  in the header of the aspx page yelds to the same result. Thank you J :-)

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 05, 2003
  <base target="_self">
  
  Sticking that in the header of the ASPX page you're targetting with .showModalDialog() gets the same results....without resorting to the overhead of IFRAME.
  
  - J
• Anonymous
  June 05, 2003
  Hasn't the target attribute been deprecated?
• Anonymous
  June 05, 2003
  IIRR turning smartnavigation ON on the aspx that appears in the modal dialog window also gets around this problem. YMMV.
• Anonymous
  June 19, 2003
  HI,
  
  I've been struggling with this all day. I used the dummy <Iframe> .html, but had a hard time getting the returnvalue.
  
  I put in the <base....> tag info and that works.
  
  But I am still having trouble getting the returnvalue.
  
  In my Parent window I have
  code....
  arrModal = window.showModalDialog
  ("popup.asp",, _
  "dialogHeight:30;
  dialogWidth:33;edge:Raised;center:Yes;help:No;resizable:No;status:No;")
  
  msgbox arrmodal
  
  
  in my popup window I have.
  
  code.....
  window.returnvalue = "HERE I BE"
  window.close
  
  The value of arrModal in the parent window when the popup is close is null.
  
  
  any ideas? It seems so straight forward.
  
  
• Anonymous
  June 19, 2003
  Elisabeth, I've heard of this from others but I never had the time to actually check it out. If you don't have problems of security/confidentiality of data, I know that a lot of people used this workaround: you can put your results on a cookie generated for the purpose (use as ID a GUID supplied from the caller at the dialog opening) and retrieve (and delete) it from the caller page as the dialog closes. Let me know if it worked for you.
• Anonymous
  August 07, 2003
  11
• Anonymous
  September 10, 2003
  window.returnvalue = "HERE I BE"
  should be
  
  window.returnValue = "HERE I BE"
• Anonymous
  November 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  December 05, 2003
  eth45yh4hy
• Anonymous
  January 07, 2004
  dfg
• Anonymous
  January 27, 2004
  thanks this fix really got me out of a jam ...
• Anonymous
  January 29, 2004
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  March 02, 2004
  dfsa
• Anonymous
  March 30, 2004
  ssdfsdf
• Anonymous
  April 07, 2004
  test
• Anonymous
  April 16, 2004
  fsda
• Anonymous
  May 03, 2004
  dg
• Anonymous
  May 17, 2004
  asodjsodjweodjwedwe
• Anonymous
  May 17, 2004
  ssss
• Anonymous
  May 26, 2004
  Thanks a lot !
  I used solution with <base.. /> and i works great.
  
  Tomas
• Anonymous
  June 02, 2004
  <center><b>you</b>
• Anonymous
  June 23, 2004
  does the <base target="_self"> work with modal .jsp files too...i tried it ..doesn't work
• Anonymous
  June 25, 2004
  test
• Anonymous
  June 25, 2004
  test
• Anonymous
  July 20, 2004
  I had trouble getting the return value.
  I dont know why, but everytime I tried to get the value I just got undefined.
  
  What you can is to define a variable in the opener window and then pass it as the dialogArguments and modify it like:
  window.dialogArguments = "new value"
  
  or even better, you can pass the window object as a reference and then update or use any variable.
  window.dialogArguments.var1 = "new value";
  window.dialogArguments.var2 = "new value";
  
  just open the window this way:
  window.showModalDialog("url.htm",window);
  
  
  I hope this helps.
  
  By the way, thanks for the other tips. I've tried none, but I hope one of those will work for me.
  
  It's weird that doesnt happens with html pages.
  
  
  
  
  
• Anonymous
  August 05, 2004
  Great tip!
  The <base target="_self"> part works great for me!
  Thank you very much!
  
  Davide
• Anonymous
  October 21, 2004
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 07, 2010
  <base target="_self"> its working in first level of popup .. but am using second level its working in Firefox kindly do the needful. -sundar