[thelist] Target=_blank or back button?

Means, Eric D eric.d.means at boeing.com
Thu Jun 20 16:25:01 CDT 2002


>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	aardvark [mailto:roselli at earthlink.net]
> Sent:	Thursday, June 20, 2002 3:51 PM
> To:	thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject:	RE: [thelist] Target=_blank or back button?
>
> > From: "Chris W. Parker" <cparker at swatgear.com>
> [...]
> > GOOD: on a site like http://www.google.com/ where you might not ever
> > come back to the originating site (that site being google of course.)
> [...]
>
> just the opposite for me... i keep my google window open, and
> always shift-click so i don't lose my search results... after all, if the
> first site is a JS-laden hack and i wanna back out, how can i if i
> start getting errors, windows spawning, etc... at least with google
> in another window, alt-tab and go...

You could choose the search site from the drop-down list of sites in your
history every modern browser provides by either:
1. Clicking the little down-arrow next to the back button
2. Holding down a left-click on the back button
3. Right-clicking the back button
Any of those solve the issue of unpleasant back problems (such as instant
redirects).

I would say that a web browser should never *force* a user to open a new
window.  Leave the links without targets (except in the case of frames); if
the user wants a new window they generally are quite capable of choosing to
create one.  Contrariwise, if you put target=_new or target=_blank and I
*don't* want a new window, I have to go to quite a bit more effort to keep
my current window, esp. in the case of form submits and whatnot.

Give the user the power; they generally know their surfing habits far better
than you do, especially since one's surfing habits change from page to page
and even link to link (e.g. if I'm reading a news item with multiple links,
I'll open some of those links in new windows for
later reading, continue to the end of the article, and then perhaps click
another link to load a new item in that same window.  You can't predict
which links I want in new windows and which I don't, so don't try).




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