[thelist] Is Target dead

[Chris Hayes]

From: "Manuel González Noriega" <manuel at simplelogica.net>>
El vie, 18-06-2004 a las 15:02, Chris Hayes escribió:

>> What about a plain old website?  If the links section of my company
website
>> actually takes users away from my site, I don't think I want a links
section
>> anymore.

>Not meaning to offend you by any means but this is nonsense.

I can't be offended that simply ;)  This is what some clients insist upon,
on pain of not paying up.

>If you have so little confidence in the quality of your site that you're
afraid to
>put a link to a external site in it, you could as well disable the back
>button and the address bar and put a big bold red heading that reads
>'PLEASE, PLEASE, STAY WITH ME, WILL YOU?'

lol, but not at all.  Why don't all applications open in the same
application window? And then you have to click back 20 times to get to back
to the word doc you were editing first thing in the morning?

>Saying that a link section takes users away from your site is like
>saying by not putting it, users will be trapped inside your site. Pretty
>naive, to say the least :-)

Links pages do exactly that.  My beautifully crafted, well thought-out site
will be left for a no doubt lesser site ;)  The user may well spend some
time browsing that site before they realise it was actually the next link on
my links page they wanted.  Then what?  The back button and history to go
back and select my links page again?  1) That's less usable than closing the
current window or ALT-TAB  2) I have to hope the linked site, somewhere in
it's labyrinth, hasn't broken the history.

For a meagrely able browser user, not opening a new window is a real pain
the ----.

Once the user has left my site the time and effort I've spent compiling for
them the uber links page will most likely be wasted, and the user has no
easy quick jump back to where they really want to be.. on my fantasticly
resourceful links page :)  I don't want to trap them, I want to help them.

>> It should be down to the designer to decide the best usage, XHTML can be
>> strict, it doesn't have to be utterly fascist.

>They even killed <marquee>>, them fascists! :o)

Good, down with <blink> :)  target="_blank" however is functionally very
useful, if not indispensable, when used with care.  We shouldn't need to
rely on scripting to get it back.