window.open doesn't Open a Window

Question

The following markup is generated by my ASP.NET MVC page.

<button onclick="window.open='/Client/ReleaseForm';" type="button" class="btn btn-primary">
 View/Print Release Form
</button>

However, clicking the button has no effect. No window is opened, no new tabs are opened, and no errors are shown in the console of my Chrome browser.

I know there are pop-up blockers, but I had got the impression that this worked as long as it was in response to a user action (such as clicking the button).

Can anyone tell me how I can display content in a new window?

• Jonathan Wood: @SecondRikudo: Yes, what about it?
• Pointy: window.open is a function - window.open("/Client/ReleaseForm")
• Jonathan Wood: @Pointy: Well dang, I tried that and got an error.
• Madara's Ghost: @JonathanWood no repro, I get a new tab as expected.
• Pointy: @JonathanWood if your broken "click" handler has already run, then you've overwritten the normal value of window.open with a string. Try in a freshly-loaded page.

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure window.open is a function, so you want:

window.open('/Client/ReleaseForm');

Also, it's probably even better to set an event handler in JavaScript code and not inline.

<button id="print" type="button" class="btn btn-primary">
 View/Print Release Form
</button>
<!-- Elsewhere, in a JS file -->
document.getElementById('print')
 .addEventListener('click', function viewOrPrintReleaseForm() {
 window.open('/Client/ReleaseForm');
 });

• Jonathan Wood: Yeah, this is working now. I tried typing window.open('/Client/ReleaseForm') in the browser (Chrome) and got the error "Uncaught TypeError: string is not a function". Not sure what happened there but it threw me off. I added a handler using jQuery and it works as expected.