Opera Asynchronicity

How Can I Deal with an Opera JS Function That is Asynchronous?

[cmarshall]

I had posted this question in the JavaScript and Ajax Forum [webmasterworld.com], but there are crickets chirping. Maybe you guys can help.

Basically, Opera treats a JavaScript call as an asynchronous call, while other browsers don't. I'd like to know if there is a way to either force the call to be synchronous, or a better way to work around it than the rather kludgy fashion demonstrated here.

---

A friend of mine asked me to post this question on this forum, and see what suggestions come about. This sort of dovetails into an earlier discussion I remember about JavaScript knowing when a page is being rendered for printing (We figured out that there was no way to do this).

He figured a way to work around it, but it seems quite a hack.

Here goes:

The CSS:

<style type="text/css">

div#div1 {
border: 2px solid red;
}

div#div2 {
border: 2px solid green;
}

</style>

The JavaScript:

<script type="text/javascript">

function print_test() {
document.getElementById('div1').style.display = 'none';

window.print();

document.getElementById('div1').style.display = '';

return false;
}

</script>

The XHTML:

<div id="div1">This &lt;div&gt; shouldn't print.</div>
<br />
<br />
<div id="div2">This &lt;div&gt; should print.</div>
<br />
<br />
<a href="#" onclick="return print_test()">Print via Javascript</a>

The problem is that, in Opera, the line immediately after the window.print(); line is executed immediately, so the hidden <div></div> is shown in the printout.

Basically, Opera treats window.print(); as an asynchronous operation, while other browsers don't.

His kludgy fix is thus:

<script type="text/javascript">

function print_test() {
document.getElementById('div1').style.display = 'none';

window.print();

if (window.opera){
setTimeout("document.getElementById('div1').style.display = ''", 1);
}
else {
document.getElementById('div1').style.display = '';
}

return false;
}

</script>

Any ideas?

[tedster]

Well, the crickets are pretty loud in here, too, aren't they?

I'm no javascript guru, but I have done some research about this issue. Does this page from dev.opera.com offer any help? In particular, this quote caught my eye:

Nested Events

There is a special case where events are not sequenced, but nested. If an event is fired explicitly through script using the dispatchEvent()-method (fireEvent() in Internet Explorer), the event is dispatched immediately. The initial script will only continue when the dispatched event has finished (and the default action has executed).

[dev.opera.com...]

[cmarshall]

Thanks, Jimminy!

I'll pass that on to my friend, and see if this addresses his issue. He's not very happy with his kludgy workaround.