Opening PDFs in a New Window with JavaScript

By Paul McCarthy
2008-01-23


Introduction

Opening documents such as PDFs in a new window should be automated using JavaScript for the following reasons:

• Users will often close the web browser when a PDF is opened, mistakenly believing the document has been opened in Adobe Reader
• The attribute historically used to open a new window, target, has been removed from the HTML 4.01 Strict specification (it's now deprecated)
• Opening a new window is a behaviour and should be moved to the behavioural layer¹.

Using JavaScript can also be particularly useful when a website is content managed. Rather than having to rely on site editors to remember to open a link to a PDF in a new window the process is handled by a simple JavaScript function.

Resources for the new window tutorial
Download the required resources before beginning this tutorial.
Start by opening the file 'pdf-new-window.htm'.
This is the content we're going to apply our JavaScript new window function to.

Tutorial Pages:
» Introduction
» The JavaScript
» Conclusion

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