[thelist] Target=_blank or back button?

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Thu Jun 20 17:12:00 CDT 2002


On Thursday, June 20, 2002, at 10:58  pm, Joel Canfield wrote:

>> 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;
>
> Eric, aardrian, other uber-surfers:
>
> I use target="_blank" extensively at http://egbdf.info. When I refer
> someone
> offsite, I'd like to make it easy for the less technical folks to
> continue
> reading where they left off (I want them to finish reading, darn it!)
> But
> Eric makes a good point; this takes control out of the hands of the
> visitor.
> Bad form and all that.

target="foo" also doesn't validate as XHTML strict. Which was a major
PITA when I converted my site to XHTML Strict as I'd used new windows
for external links pretty consistently.

Cheers
Martin
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