Tabbed browsing and its effects on layout

Popup windows, popup to parent refreshes etc.

[yokelrobin]

I have been using Firefox as my default browser (unless you ask MSN Messenger which is still convinced I am a dedicated IE user... but that's a different subject!) for quite a while now, and have recently started to wonder how much it will effect the layout and functionality of popup windows.

There is obviously the issue of popup prevention, which I don't really want to address that much here, but what occurred to me is that of layout.

A lot of popup windows are defined by the website to be a certain size, and the content is often skewed by my browser displaying it as full screen.

Another problem I have noticed is a website that requires me to login to access content. The login appears as a popup window which then refreshes the parent page when I have successfully logged in. In Firefox the page does not refresh and I have to do so manually. Not a big issue for me as I am sufficiently web savvy to understand what is going on, but now that Firefox is gradually becoming more 'mainstream' (I have several friends who use it and know very little about the internet) it is becoming more and more important.

This is slightly more than an issue of browsers rendering pages differently - a lot of webmasters do not pay that much attention to their popup windows (otherwise I wouldn't notice this so much!), but it is something to consider.

How do your popups look in full screen mode? Just because your website looks right in Firefox, do all the features work? For the website of a company that has (I believe) floated on the Stock Exchange to have a website where you have to manually intervene to log in is ... well, you get my drift!

(These are problems I've mainly noticed on gambling sites, the worst being a major UK bookies who did not support Firefox for their casino! Unbelievable when you consider the amount of money involved!)

<edit>I have a feeling this should have been posted in 'HTML and Browsers' - apologies if it is in the wrong place, but I don't think I can move it!</edit>

[bird]

One related issue is that many web sites use broken JavaScript routines, which may somehow magically work on IE anyway, but fail on other browsers.

The error I see most often is a pop-up window opening, but the content still loading in the old window (or in both windows simultaneously). I assume that this is at least partly related to the problems you mention, so the general topic would be how to correctly address child and parent window viewports.

Firefox becoming more mainstream will have the beneficial effect of more webmasters becoming aware of web standards, and the necessity of cross-browser testing. I think in the long run that's a good thing despite the current speed bumps.

Sorry I have no educated answer about the topic of pop-ups in full screen mode.