Hi,
The reason that using it with the unload doesn't work is that it
doesn't stop execution at the point it's shown the way alert and
confirm do. As far as I know, only built-in things like alert and
confirm can do that. Consequently, you show the dialog, but then the
browser continues with what it was doing -- which is to move away from
the page.
Your option 3 of opening another window with all the data and your
"save?" question is unlikely to be successful; opening a window from
the onload event is a classic means of trying to trap the user into
looking at multiple adverts and you're likely to run afoul of ad-
blockers. And that's just as well, it's not a great user experience.
Your option 4 is not possible. For links within your page that take
the user elsewhere, you could do it. But if the user is just typing
in a new URL in the address bar, selecting a favorite, hitting their
"home" button, etc., your page is not -- and never will be -- told
what page they're going to.
This is a common problem and I wouldn't be surprised if someday
browsers start providing better mechanisms around this. Frankly,
though, with the current standards I doubt you're going to find a
solution to this that provides a better user experience than the built-
in confirm windoww, which does after all allow you to provide a
message to show and does provide reasonable options if you phrase your
question right. So I'd recommend:
1. Live with the confirm window.
or
2. Redesign your app such that users' changes are automatically saved
to a "draft" area as they're made, so that when they come back, you
can let them pick up where they left off (keeping the changes,
continuing with making changes, or discarding them) -- something akin
to GMail's (and others') handling of draft email messages. And as
with GMail's draft messages, there will always be a brief period
between a change being made and your saving a draft of it, so you'll
probably need to use a confirm in that interval (as GMail does).
HTH,
--
T.J. Crowder
tj / crowder software / com
Independent Software Engineer, consulting services available
On Mar 7, 3:45 pm, "radhaspen...@gmail.com" <radhaspen...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I have requirements to code something that I need some help with. I
> am encountering the following issue: I need to display a window right
> before someone leaves the page they are on. Basically prompt them to
> save their changes or continue on to the next page. On the save I
> execute an AJAX request to Save and then they go on to the next page.
> Well I can do this easily using the regular javascript confirm object:
> <body onunload="var x=confirm("save changes");if(x) ajxcalltosave();">
>
> However I need to do this using the prototype window. As I need to
> override the button choices to be "yes, save" or "no, don't". (which
> to my knowledge you cannot do with confirm)
> During the unload event-- When I instantiate a Dialog.confirm window
> via prototype's libraries the window shows up for a split second and
> the user gets redirected to the next page. I want to make the
> prototype window stay before moving on to the next page. That is the
> issue. I have used it before and can display the window and it
> behaves properly on every other event other than unload, and I don't
> understand why. I'm sure if I step through the code enough times I
> should hopefully find some clue as to its behavior. But haven't found
> any so far.
>
> I could open another window referring to a different page with the
> question and buttons, in which case the parent page would already move
> on and I'd have to pass all the information to execute the save as
> parameters to the request displayed in the new window. That would be
> kind of cloojy.
>
> If there is some way I could abort the unload or redirect back to the
> same page then show the Dialog.confirm window that would work but I
> would need to know where the user initially intended on leaving to so
> that I could redirect them there after the save.
>
> RECAP
> Option 1: Override confirm's button choices. CON: Not possible as
> per my knowledge
> Option 2: Make the prototype window not disappear before moving on to
> the next page. CON: I don't know how
> Option 3: Open another window CON: Not pretty, the parent page moves
> on before the save occurs, would not appease requirements
> Option 4: Abort the unload, stay on the same page CON: Need to know
> where the user meant to go so they could be redirected back there
> later
>
> Thank you for reading this. If you can provide some insight to my
> issue, I'd really appreciate it. (I really would like to be able to
> execute option 2.)
>
> :-)
> radha
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