We Keep Coding

Can a Google Chrome Extension popup window remain open as a new window is opened on top of it and then closed?

I have a Google Chrome Extension that uses the Background.html and background.js files to show this popup window when the chrome extension icon in the tray menu is clicked on....
Inside my popup is a button to generate a screenshot image of the current tab URL and it then uploads the image to my server and fills in the text input with the URL of my image upload.
I am now wanting to add the capability to select a region on the webpage screen and generate a screenshot image cropped to be just the content inside the selected region like this image below shows the region selected on the page....
My roblem now is that I cannot simply have a button in my popup take me into region selection mode on the page. I could but it would close the popup window and I have researched and found out that you cannot programtically open the popup.
So once the popup would close, I would no longer be able to edit the record loaded in it before.
I am trying to come up with a new solution to achieve my desired result.
Idea 1
Move all the functionality that my current background popup has into a modal window displayed on the actual webpage.
This would be a big change as it would require a lot of message passing as the modal code would not have access to theextension API which is used to generate the screenshot and get all the tabs data.
I could then open a modal that looks like my popup in the image above when the extension icon is clicked on.
When the generate screenshot button is clicked it would then send a message to the background script to get the tab API and generate the screenshot and then send it back as a message to the content script in the page.
As for my new feature of selecting a region and creating image of that region. The modal would have a button to do that and on click would hide the modal window. Next it would let me make the selection which on edn would send a message to background again and generate a screenshot and crop it to the coordinates of my selection and return it back in a return message to the content script which would then show the hidden modal window and update the image inside to show the new image.
This is the hardest way bu the best I think.
Idea 2)
If it is possibble even, on a button click inside my current popup would then launch a new popup window of the current page and allow me to make my selection region and generate the image which on completion would close the popup window and send the result back to my extension popup.
I do not know if this would work because I am unsure if the extension popup would auto-close when I click the new popup window?
Does anyone know of other way to accomplish this or if my ideas would be practical?

You can look at Adblock Plus for inspiration.
They have a popup with "Block Element" button that switches to "now interact with the page" mode.
After the user clicks, they open follow-up UI injected into the page.
In any case, clicking outside the popup will make it lose focus, which closes it by design.
You could instruct the user to click your button again after they interact with the page, or you would need to inject some UI into the page itself.

how to make pop up window and parent window both active

I want to open a pop up window and submit data through it. But as soon as I click outside of this small window, this popup gets closed. I want that both the windows should be active.
Please help

How can I open a pop-up window without it being blocked?

I haven't found a single answer able to tell me what's the right way to open a popup.
Times have changed, and popups have been mostly replaced with fancybox-like boxes. However, there are still times when popups are needed.
For those cases, I don't want my popup to be blocked by the browsers.
What's the right way to open a popup without it being blocked? Even if it opens a new tab in the browser. I just want my popup to be open, and have control of it from the parent or vice versa.

Popup blockers will block any popup, unless it is opened because of an user action.
If the user clicks on a link, and a popup is opened in the click listener of that link, the popup blocker knows the user want to open something and will not (or should not) block the popup.
What you cannot do:
open a popup when the page is opened or closed
open a popup after a certain interval
open a popup after something asynchronous happens
What you can do:
open a popup in the on click listener
using target="_blank" in a anchor tag
You can access both windows with JavaScript variables:
if you use window.open, the parent can have a reference to the popup by assigning the result of window.open to a variable. Check out this article at W3Schools.
If the popup needs to have access to the window who has opened it, you can use window.opener. Check out this question.

try this, it works for me
$('#myButton').click(function () {
var redirectWindow = window.open('http://google.com', '_blank');
redirectWindow.location;
});
Js fiddle for this is here https://jsfiddle.net/safeeronline/70kdacL4/2/
if you want to open new tab after ajax call see this fiddle http://jsfiddle.net/safeeronline/70kdacL4/1/

Identify if the window opened is popup window or a normal window in IE

I have a requirement where i want to restrict users from opening url manually from browser. The url should only open from clicking a button which opens a pop window.
Notes:-1.) I cannot temper with button code that's application's standard code
2.) I have already tried window.opener but it does not work in IE.
So basically i want to identify if the opened window is a pop window or normal browser window.
Thanks in advance.

How can I get number of child windows for a browser

I have one icon (say open) in home page. When I click on this icon one child window will be open and the icon in that home page is also changed to 'close icon'. When close this popup window the icon should be same as previous icon (i.e. open icon) in home page. It's working fine when I stay on the same page.
But when redirecting from home page to next page the entire page gets reloaded. And the default image (open icon) is displaying even if the popup window is opened.
Now my requirement is:
At the time of page redirection the image should be loaded based upon the popup window. i.e. if popup window is open it should display the close icon otherwise it display open icon.
If page is refreshed or redirecting to another page the reference of the popup window is removed. then how can I get the reference of that popup window in a redirecting page.
How to count the number of child windows for a browser
EDIT:
I have tried the following solutions:
I set cookie at the time of opening a popup window and reset that cookie whenever I have closed that popup window. But the problem is, at the time of page redirection if I close the popup window the cookie is not reset to it's previous value, because the page is still in processing.
same problem with the session variable also
Please help me.

Set a cookie or a session variable when you open and close. This way you can remember the state of your popup window during new requests

When you go from one page to the next, you lose the reference to the pop-up window. But the pop-up window doesn't lose its reference to the main window. window.opener will always point to the window that opened it, even when there's a page change. Use this fact to reestablish communication between the windows after a navigation event. You might need to use an interval function to probe the main window, as I don't think you can listen for an event.