I am on a work intranet only having to support IE8. I am creating a page called "watch video" which (as the name suggests) serves a video to the client. A page linking to a video will open this page in a popup with the link in the url. The person accessing the video (and a datetime stamp) is then logged into the database.

The page is just a simple "Your video will start momentarily, otherwise click here" with the click here having a href of FILE:\\sharedDrive:\somePath\someVideo.wmv. I then automatically open the video by running document.getElementById('anchor').click() to click the anchor. The video then opens in Windows Media Player and i then want to do window.close().

But the page has changed to a blank page because I have clicked the anchor. Do you know how I could close the page after it has redirected? I am trying this:

<script type="text/javascript">
    document.getElementById('watchVideo').click();
    self.close();
</script>

I am on a work intranet only having to support IE8. I am creating a page called "watch video" which (as the name suggests) serves a video to the client. A page linking to a video will open this page in a popup with the link in the url. The person accessing the video (and a datetime stamp) is then logged into the database.

The page is just a simple "Your video will start momentarily, otherwise click here" with the click here having a href of FILE:\\sharedDrive:\somePath\someVideo.wmv. I then automatically open the video by running document.getElementById('anchor').click() to click the anchor. The video then opens in Windows Media Player and i then want to do window.close().

But the page has changed to a blank page because I have clicked the anchor. Do you know how I could close the page after it has redirected? I am trying this:

<script type="text/javascript">
    document.getElementById('watchVideo').click();
    self.close();
</script>

• javascript
• video
• dom-events

Share Improve this question Follow edited May 8, 2021 at 17:34 Brian Tompsett - 汤莱恩 5,8937272 gold badges6161 silver badges133133 bronze badges asked Aug 15, 2011 at 5:24 Timothy RuhleTimothy Ruhle 7,6071010 gold badges4444 silver badges6868 bronze badges

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3 Answers 3

Sorted by: Reset to default 3

Add target="_blank" to your <a> tag so that it opens in a new separate Window (Which the browser will automatically close before it is visible since it plays it in Windows Media Player). Then you can close the current window as well.

I'm assuming you are doing this in IE or maybe firefox?

document.getElementById('anchor').onclick = "window.open('FILE:\\sharedDrive:\somePath\someVideo.wmv'); window.close()";

or instead of window.close() do a return false; that will let the page know not to do the default.

The best solution that i found (inspired by PualPRO's answer) was this

<a id="myAnchor" href="FILE:\\sharedDrive:\somePath\someVideo.wmv" target="myIframe" onclick="setTimeout(function(){window.close()}, 5000)">Watch Video</a>

<iframe name="myIframe" style="display:none;"></iframe>

<script>
    document.getElementById('myAnchor').click();
</script>

So then on load it automatically clicks the anchor to trigger then events. I put the window.close() inside a setTimeout so that the page had time to load the href before closing itself. Otherwise it would close before opening the file.