Getting every window as an Array?

[???]

I was wondering if you could get an array or something of every window, or an array of the names. I was looking at some of Firefox's js and they had some stuff for tabs that was like,

this._windows[<something goes here>]

but when I tried it, it didn't work. Any other possibilities?

[Trinithis]

var windows = [window];
for(var i=0; i<window.frames.length; ++i) windows.push(window.frames[i]);

[Trinithis]

Oh, and when you open a new window through window.open(), add the new window to the array.

[Twey]

You can override window.open to do that automatically:

open = (function(oldopen) {
  return function() {
    return (windows[windows.length] = oldopen.apply(window, arguments));
  };
})(open);

[???]

Wait, it says that window.frames.length is equal to 0, so how does that work?

[Twey]

That just means you have no frames on the page.

[???]

Frames? I was wondering about other browser windows. How do frames play in? I had some tabs open.

[jscheuer1]

A frame, if it exists, is a window object.

[???]

Well then does that work in reverse? Were if a window exits its part of window.frames? Because I don't want every frame, I want every window.

[jscheuer1]

No, a full window is not a part of the window.frames object. If you don't want any frames or iframes, the window.frames object may be excluded. I haven't been following this thread closely so, I'm not sure if it would have to be actively excluded or merely remove from consideration. Most likely you could just leave it out, testing would be a good idea though.

However, if you leave out frames, you do not technically have all 'windows'. This may come back to haunt you at some point, or not.

Additionally, windows not created with javascript and not existing as frames in the window the code in this thread is on, would not be included in the array. I don't think there is any way to just get all windows, like if the user arrives at your page with several windows open from another domain or domains, as far as I know, those cannot be found or counted with javascript on your page.