[thelist] Strange Link bar behavior

[Andrew Clover]

Joel Konkle-Parker <jjk3 at msstate.edu> wrote:

> Whenever I click on any of the external (blue, central, in the white box)
> links on my site, or use any of the search forms, it activates my IE6 Links
> bar, which I usually have disabled. [...]

> Why is it doing this, and is there a way to fix it?

This is just how window.open() works. Netscape and IE give you the
"default browser features" if you don't specify the features string,
even if the user has changed their browser features from the default.
Opera even gives you no window furniture at all if you don't specify
them! Only Mozilla works in the sensible way you'd expect. For this
reason, most authors specify all window features explicitly, which can
be a bit annoying if your own preferences are different.

Using a 'target="_blank"' attribute works better for simple 'open in
new window' links. If you are authoring to [X]HTML Strict where there
is no target attribute, a somewhat cheeky workaround is:

  <a href="foo.html" onclick="this.target='_blank';">

...or my favoured solution of giving up and letting the using decide
whether they want to open in a new window or not. :-)

-- 
Andrew Clover
mailto:and at doxdesk.com
http://and.doxdesk.com/