[thelist] dumb css questions for valid XHTML 1.0 Strict

[Rick den Haan]

Ricky Zhou wrote:
> > external links should open in a new window.
> This isn't really a job for CSS, as it doesn't deal with presentation.
> However, I'd like to strongly discourage against making links open in new
> windows- let users control/manage their own windows.

For a website I recently finished, that was targeted at the elderly (65+
y/o), our customer required a field study on how these people actually use
websites.  We hired a company to perform this research, using a group of 30
people (15 male and 15 female) from 65 to 88 years old.  The results were
quite interesting:

* 24 of them double-clicked all links;
* 28 of them didn't know about the right-click menu;
* 17 of them closed the browser window when done with an external website
and wanting to return to the original page, 7 of them used the Home-button
to attempt to return to the original page, 5 used the Back-button to travel
back, whereas the last one just retyped the URL from his notes.

The second point is why I'm against the "let the user manage their own
windows"-approach.


Anyway, back on topic, what I generally do to make links open in a new
window, while having the XHTML code validate, is setting a rel="external"
attribute to the <a>-tag, and running a JS-function on page load that loops
through all links and sets target="_blank" that way.

There's an article on Sitepoint that explains the technique:
<http://www.sitepoint.com/article/standards-compliant-world>

HTH,
Rick.