window.parent.location.href IE9 Bug?

Question

window.parent.location.href IE9 Bug?

11.2k Views Asked by tgormtx At 15 April 2025 at 05:02

Scenario:

domain1.com hosts an iFrame of domain2.com.
domain2.com is using javascript to trigger dynamic links that need to route to the parent window.
The links are all relative paths.

Clicking on /linkA.html (in iframe on domain2.com) routes the parent to domain1.com/linkA.html.

var _generic = "/linkA.html";

    $("#canvas").each( function () {
        $(this).children("a").attr("href",_generic);
        $(this).click( function(e) {
            e.preventDefault();
            window.parent.location.href = _generic;
        } );
    } );

Changing the links to absolute (domain2.com/linkA.html) solves the functional problem.

Has anyone run into this before?

Original Q&A

There are 4 best solutions below

**Sean Kinsey** · Answer 1

In order for the browser to resolve the entire url when setting relative paths, it first needs to read the current href, and this is blocked by the SOP.

But I am pretty sure that if you use parent.location instead of parent.location.href, then this will work just fine.

**Glenn Ferrie** · Answer 2

Glenn Ferrie On 13 July 2011 at 19:59

You should try using window.opener.location instead of window.parent.location.

**Samuel Marchant** · Answer 3

The forward slash implicit folder in the URL works in Moz. browsers, but with explorer, links from the same folder don not put the forward slash. It's simply X-browser syntax. You may have done better puting ./ (dot forward slash with explorer but the proper way is no slash preceding the filename for a same folder URL).

**jacobq** · Answer 4

I have seen a difference in IE9 vs. IE8, FireFox, and Webkit. Consider the following code:

Parent source:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><title>iframe test page</title></head>
<body>
    <h1>Parent window</h1>
    <iframe src="//domain2/iframe.html"></iframe>
</body>
</html>

iframe source (on separate domain):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><title>iframe content</title></head>
<body>
    <h1>iframe content</h1>
    <script>function redirect() { window.parent.location = "/new-href"; } </script>
    <a href="javascript:redirect()">Redirect the parent window please</a>
</body>
</html>

If the main page is opened in IE8 (or IE9 set to run in IE8 mode or Chrome 23 or FF16) clicking the link results in navigating to //(iframe domain)/new-href whereas in IE9 it goes to //(original parent domain)/new-href

I am still investigating how to work around this issue and will update this if/when I have more information.

UPDATE: Setting the target="_top" attribute for iframe links works around this problem.

Updated iframe source (on separate domain):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><title>iframe content</title></head>
<body>
    <h1>iframe content</h1>
    <a href="/new-href" target="_top">Redirect the parent window please</a>
</body>
</html>

Clicking the link in this updated iframe code will redirect the parent (entire) window to //(iframe domain)/new-href in both IE8 & IE9 (and, as far as I know, all browsers as well). That is what you want to do, right?

e.g. If you want to make all tags in an iframe cause the top/main/parent window to navigate somewhere rather than the iframe navigating somewhere then use something like this:

$("iframe a").attr("target", "_top");

window.parent.location.href IE9 Bug?

There are 4 best solutions below

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