Chromeless windows?

Good or bad to use? Good script?

[Lvanhoff]

Hi,

I have a client who wants to use a chromeless window which would be launched from an html newsletter with an image in it, which would link to the swf and they want the swf to open in a chromeless window.

Is it still true that it only works in IE?

Is it a good thing to do or not?

Any recommendations for good scripts? I see several of them out on the net but not sure it's a good thing to do.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Laura

[JAB Creations]

I believe that it works up to IE 5.5? I'm really not sure exactly but I know that there are newer versions that will not do this.

Also if you watch the IE blog closely you should be aware that the MS IE team is probally going to force the address bar to always appear (in contrast to being able to disable it in a popup) for security reasons.

[topsites]

Far as if it's a good thing to do, so long the chromeless window is being used for aesthetic/cosmetic purposes only and NOT to prevent the visitor from closing an advertisement, it is good. If it is being used for the purpose of advertisement and it hides / floats over top of useful content, if you have a problem with TOO much traffic then this will help alleviate said problem almost immediately.

Conversion-wise, this advertising method is poor due to its bad taste.

[Lvanhoff]

The idea was that it's a very pretty animation that a flash designer did as a holiday greeting card...so it's purely cosmetic. But I worry about the fact that it doesn't work in all browsers, that seems like a real problem.

[encyclo]

It is very unlikely to work from an HTML newsletter - the vast majority do not support Javascript in incoming emails for security reasons so the command for opening the window would not work at all. Even launching directly from a web page could well be problematic: if the popup is unrequested then it may well be blocked by the browser, and even if the user has to click to view the resulting window may well retain the address bar.

The best course of action may be to create a standard (non-popup) page with a dark or black background and place the animation in the center, then add a standard link from the newsletter directly to the page.

[Lvanhoff]

Thanks very much for all the information...I will recommend no chromeless window to the client.

Thanks!