title: alternatives to window.open for IE 8 or higher
body: <p>We have a requirement to open an external application in a new window and still having a handle to close it.</p>
  
  <p>These are the limitations we are bound to:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>We have to submit a GET request.</li>
  <li>External URl doesn't want to give much control to the calling application. For eg- opening external aplication in an iframe is not allowed.</li>
  <li>The calling application needs to close the external URL window based on when it receives a flag indication session is complete.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>So far we have tried window.open with couple of twists and tweaks, but any solution does not work in IE 8 or higher.</p>
  
  <p>We have a raised a ticket in microsoft forum, but just wanted to know, if there are any alternatives to window.open to achieve this.</p>
  
  <p>System configuration:</p>
  
  <p>Windows 7-64bit OS with IE 8.0.7601.17514 with 256 Cipher Strength.</p>
  
  <p>The challenge unresolved is getting a handle and closing the new window opened.</p>
  
  <p>The options we have tried:</p>
  
  <p>Approach 1:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var handle = window.open("http://www.example.com/details.jspuser=test&amp;age=20", "windowname");
  handle.close();   // Here handle is coming as null.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Approach 2:</p>
  
  <p>JavaScript:</p>
  
  <pre><code>   var target =  "windowname";
     var handle = window.open("about:blank",target);
     if(handle!= null) // here we are getting the handle object
     {
         document.getElementById('form1').target = target; // setting the target to Pop window
         document.getElementById('form1').submit();  // Now this will submit the form and send the GET request to pop up
         alert(handle.closed);  // Noticed that this line is giving "true", even though we have not closed the pop up
         handle.close(); // does not close the pop up window
     }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>HTML</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;form id="form1" method="GET" action="http://www.example.com/details.jsp
      &lt;input type="hidden" name="user" value="test"&gt;
      &lt;input type="hidden" name="age" value="20"&gt;
  &lt;/form&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Workaround : </p>
  
  <p>If we open the browser in protected mode: on this problem resolves.</p>