Update… Unfortunately this code no longer works in Firefox 2.x ~ I guess they saw this and fixed it, (for them - broke it for us!).

Recently at work I was asked to make javascript:window.close(); work in FireFox. I searched hard and long across numerous forums and on each and every one the answer was the same - it cannot be done unless the page was opened by a script! Or at least it couldn’t until I was required to make it happen

I’m by no means a JavaScript expert - in fact I hardly know any at all - but I couldn’t believe that this was completely impossible so I came up with the following:

The first step is to fool the browser into thinking that it was opened with a script…

window.open('','_parent','');

This opens a new page, (non-existent), into a target frame/window, (_parent which of course is the window in which the script is executed, so replacing itself), and defines parameters such as window size etc, (in this case none are defined as none are needed). Now that the browser thinks a script opened a page we can quickly close it in the standard way…

window.close();

and there you have it - I told you it was simple! In case you didn’t follow that, here is the complete solution in two easy steps:

1. Copy/paste the following code to the head of your page…

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

function closeWindow() {

window.open('','_parent','');

window.close();

}

</script>

2. Set your link like this:

<a href="javascript:closeWindow();">Close Window</a>

and there you have it - a problem that it seemed, (according to my trying to find a solution before coming up with this one anyway), to have baffled everyone else.