why I set the site up this way in “Stephen Gets Radical,” now I’ll delve a little deeper into howWhat I wanted seemed simple enough: an “ENTER” link on my home page that would open a full screen window; providing me with an enhanced navigational tool, a flexible advertising opportunity, and a unique interface for enjoying my site’s content. I also wanted to display an exit page that was *only* visible when the full screen window was closed…

Complications arose because I wanted my site to work equally well using both IE and Netscape; the browsers over \’0% of my visitors used. I wanted to have a “back up” plan for dealing with other browsers, and I didn’t want the exit page to come to the foreground (become visible ‘over’ the full screen window) once it finished loading.

Let me start by saying that I’m not a programmer; most of the mechanics of this process are a mystery to me, which is why I enjoy doing this so much! I go to all the online JS resources and combine snips of this and that, along with a little inspiration from sites I like, and a dose of how I’d like to see it all work. Copy ‘n Paste is my friend… Saving frequently, making backup copies of everything, plus lots of trial and error let me accomplish my goals.

I touched on some of the thinking behind why I set the site up this way in “Stephen Gets Radical,” now I’ll delve a little deeper into how I did it. Understanding some of the problems that I faced and the workarounds that I came up with will help you to write better code, and if you can figure this all out, you’ll be able to do a lot of cool things.

While the following foolishness took me three days of aggravating experimentation, I’ll hand it to you on a silver platter. If anybody has easier or better ways to do this, please let me know…

Things to Watch Out For

You cannot load a fullscreen display into the currently active browser window; you must open a new browser window.
When you enter fullscreen mode, the base (launching) window remains behind, and is visible when the fullscreen window closes providing a great opportunity to have a psuedo exit console – you’re not really popping a new window for the ad, it was actually the original page!
This psuedo exit console is also the page that non-standard browsers will see.
Making the original page consistently “refresh” to the exit page – without – coming to the foreground is the hardest part!
Remember that when using a fullscreen window, you need to provide an “exit” button to close the window, and a “back” button too. If you forget, “[ALT]+[F4]” will kill the window.