Can a browser window be made full screen?

javascript window commands

[IanTurner]

Can a javascript command force the current window to full screen display (with no window frame)? and if so how is this done.

[BlobFisk]

There is a JavaScript out there called OpenChromelessWindow (one example here [dhtmlshock.com]). It'll open the window full screen, with no menu bars etc. and no window frame (or chrome).

It's IE only, though.

[andreasfriedrich]

You do not need the chromeless window. Simply adding fullscreen=(yes¦1) to the string passed as the third parameter to the window.open [msdn.microsoft.com] method will suffice (IE only).

Andreas

[Googly]

I'm sure you have your reasons for wanting to do this IanTurner, but I don't know of many people who are happy when the website explodes in their face and fills the whole screen. A year ago I thought that was a good idea and then read loads of stuff saying 'DON'T GO THERE!'

[andreasfriedrich]

One such reason could be that you use the browser to display a presentation that you are running from CD [webmasterworld.com].

Andreas

[tbear]

Me, I'd leave and not come back to any site doing that to my browser!
So many times I come across fancy tricks that are executed without a full understanding, resulting in a frozen screen or generally (shall we say) a crashed browser.
I recommend 'executing' the web master responsible. ;)

[IanTurner]

Andreas - you are psychic, the client wants a CD presentation that can also be published to the web.

We are not currently planning full screen for the web version just a normal browser window.

Having just read your CD presentation thread looks like you are way ahead of us.

Unfortunately we haven't got any PHP or MySQL experience! Not that it wouldn't be possible to learn if they want any more than we can do in DHTML.

[andreasfriedrich]

Well there are only so many sensible reasons to use the full screen mode so it was an educated guess ;)

Even when you use simple DHTML using Apache might be an advantage over having the browser access the file system directly. I remember that some browsers had difficulties storing cookies when the document that tried to write them via JavaScript was accessed via the file system instead of HTTP. I´m not sure whether that still applies to modern browsers.

Andreas

[DrDoc]

I'd suggest something else ..

Using fullscreen mode in IE is good, but remember that the user can always play around with it like any normal browser window, go back to normal etc.

It's better if you use a signed script. With signed script you can do pretty much anything you want - real full screen (no title bar or anything), disallow changing the window size, disallow normal exit commands (Alt-F4) etc.

Or, depending on the content, why not use a Java browser, or even a flash presentation?