NavigateToURL bug in FireFox?

Question

Hi all,
I'm expreiencing a strange bug with FireFox... I have the
following example application:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="
http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
layout="absolute">
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
import flash.net.navigateToURL;
private function onClick():void {
navigateToURL(new URLRequest("abc.html"));
]]>
</mx:Script>
<mx:Button label="test" click="onClick()"/>
</mx:Application>
So, basically, when I click the "test" button, the browser
should go to "abc.html".
Now, if I run the application locally, it works perfectly as
expected in both IE and FF. But, if I run the application off my
webserver (Apache2), then IE still works perfectly, but FF doesn't.
The behaviour I get in FF is as follows: when I click on the
button, roughly half of the time it will work as expected (ie opens
"abc.html" in a new tab), and the other half of the time FF
displays a "FireFox prevented this site from opening a popup
window" message.
Now the fact that this only occurs when the application is
served remotely is obviously due to FF's security model. But the
weird part (bug?) is that the "blocking" occurs randomly. If I just
click the "test" button a dozen times (slow or fast) the result
will be around half a dozen new windows, with the other half a
dozen blocked :(
So, has anyone experienced this problem before? Can you spot
anything wrong with the code in my example above? I've tried the
example on another PC, and it has exactly the same problem - both
PC's are running FireFox 1.5.
Any thoughts would be really appreciated.
Paul.

Answer 1

Hi leotemp, thanks for you reply. I've had a play with the
IFrame approach in the past, and it introduces some other problems
for the type of app I'm writing (can't really say what that app is
yet).
I've done some more playing with the problem, and how's this
for wierd mis-behaviour? ... I wrote an openNewWindow() JavaScript
function and placed it into the HTML wrapper that loads the swf
file. Then, if I call that function using navigateToURL, the same
problem occurs. But if I call that function using
ExternalInterface.call("openNewWindow","abc.html") then it *almost*
works... you see, the ExternalInterface version works well if the
call is made from a click handler (like the example above), but
unfortunately, I need it to work in the result handler of a SOAP
service call... and there, it is blocked again! Though this time
the blocking is a lot more consistant... ie it blocks about 9 out
of 10 tries :(
I'm assuming that the problem is due to FF trying to
differentiate between popups that are the direct result of user
clicks, versus popups that result from automatic scripts - blocking
the latter, but not the former.
Any other ideas?!
Paul.