This code provided courtesy of
Nebula Research and Development

This directory contains a sample of how to close a parent
browser window from a child.  It has been tested in IE 5.0,
IE 5.5, and Netscape 6.0.  Please notify Tony if you've
confirmed that it does not work for other browsers.

There are three files:
1) grandparent.htm : launch this to start sample.  It will
then open a new popup window with a single link to child.htm.
This page remains open throughout the sample and is just a
starting page.
2) child.htm : this is the page that is going to be closed by
it's own child.
3) grandchild.htm : this closes child.htm.

How it works:
When a link is clicked in child.htm to open grandchild.htm it
starts a "non-blocking" timer which will wake up every second
(adjustable) to see if a flag is set.  If the flag is set the
page closes itself.  If the flag is not set, it re-activates
the timer to check the flag in another second.
When a link is clicked in grandchild.htm, a JavaScript function
sets the flag in the parent page "child.htm".  The grandchild
doesn't really close it's parent, it just tells the parent it's
ok to close.

The re-activating script in child.htm can be coded to stop
re-activation.  There is almost zero overhead in the timing
process and it does not hang any open windows.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome.