doojinsi has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hail and well met, brethern and sisthern(?!); I wrote a perl CGI app (Win32 and IE only) that does everything the users need to do to transmit financial data to a controlling authority, except press the OK button for them. If the app fails for any reason, the user sees a fatal error page explaining how to resolve the error and that the app must close (always something external to the app). A button on that page closes IE using javascript like this: 
print "<P ALIGN=\"CENTER\">";
print "<A HREF=\"javascript:close()\" ALT=\"close this application\">"
+;
print "<IMG SRC=\"$app_exit_button_img\" WIDTH=103 HEIGHT=103></A></P>
+";

[download]
But IE is protected from this type of activity, and the user, after pressing the button, sees a popup window that asks if s/he is really sure. Is it possible to code the close with perlscript instead? I'm thinking I could use Win32::OLE to access the current instance of IE and just close it. Am I pursuing the untamed waterfowl here?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: perlscript to close internet explorer?
by Juerd (Abbot) on Jun 04, 2002 at 20:45 UTC

    Javascript cannot be used, as you have already found out. The Perl is server-side and cannot close a client-side window. Please refer to documents on closing windows with Javascript, as Perl is in this case not the answer. I'm sure something useful can be found at http://www.irt.org/. 

    - Yes, I reinvent wheels.
- Spam: Visit eurotraQ.

[reply]
Re: perlscript to close internet explorer?
by joshua (Pilgrim) on Jun 05, 2002 at 04:20 UTC
    Why not just use this?...
    print qq[<script>close()</script>];

    The user won't have to click the link. Instead, it'll just popup the confirm box making sure they want to close the window.

    BTW, Get rid of those nasty_escaped_quotes! : P

    Joshua

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[d/l]
      joshua++ for a pragmatic solution. :-)
      ____________
      Makeshifts last the longest.
[reply]
      hmmm...

      the <script></script> snippet would be called when the fatal error occurred?

      If so, it doesn't exactly follow the flow, which is:

      1. good things happen -> user clicks exit button -> processing shuts down -> user closes browser

      2. BAD things happen -> user sees fatal error screen where s/he must record some info for others to help resolve -> user clicks EXIT button and (hopefully) browser closes.

      If I issue <script>close() when the fatal error occurs, wouldn't this preclude the error screen from appearing? The idea is that s/he MUST do something with the info on the error page.
[reply]
        Well, I guess you didn't make it clear that it was imperative for the user to see that fatal error until your previous message. I do have another solution though...

        You could open a new window for the processing,
        <form action="process.cgi" method="POST" target="process">
        Then, if there is a fatal error and the user clicks the close window button, IE wont prompt them. (It doesn't prompt on new windows, just their parents.)

        hth.
        Joshua

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[d/l]
Re: perlscript to close internet explorer?
by BUU (Prior) on Jun 04, 2002 at 20:56 UTC
    NO. CLOSING USERS WINDOW = BAD. This is a very, annoying thing. And more to the point, is virtually impossible to do. There is a small hack that will do this in IE (well, it used to, doubt if it does any more), and nothing at all that will do it in anyother browser.
[reply]
      Yep. Lots of references say this is bad. But! I'm the developer and in this case, it's imperative that the app/window close on a fatal error. I should note that there are only a couple of things that are fatal and the users have already expressed annoyance at having to click 2 buttons to close the app, instead of just one. So, this is per request, in addition to just making good sense. Please share the IE hack if you have it, I really need to implement this for just this one app.
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