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Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended

marco.org

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Re: Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended

#61

Post by ecesena »

andybak wrote: post #55
ecesena wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Theneeds [1] we decided to open links to news in new tabs/windows (using target="_blank"). This is mainly for 2 reasons. First, we expect our users to not necessarily be techy (in contrast to what Marco says "Most people know how to open your article’s outbound links in new tabs or windows, especially readers of a tech site"). Second, we want a consistent experience across all websites we open, and some of them fo…

In my experience it's actually the opposite of what you state. Non-'techy' users understand the back button and they are completely flummoxed when a target=_blank link breaks this behaviour for them. They often don't notice the tab bar and don't realise that something unusual has happened that requires something other than their learned use of 'back'. You have to understand that you're going against the norm. If 80%…

Thanks for the feedback.

This is actually the result of long thoughts and discussions, and I totally was (and, in general, am) against target=_blank. So I'm just reporting things as they are and as we decided in the team, I don't want to create a religion war :)

Anyway, what made me change opinion is actually my behavior here on hn. I usually go through all the stream, select the news that I want to read and open them in new tabs. Then I start, tab by tab, to consume them. So, based on my experience, I wouldn't find too disturbing an open in new tab.

Re: Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended

#62

Post by barrkel »

At this point, I middle-click pretty much all links, and then decide to close the window or not depending on whether I want to continue the session or not.

Since I use tree-style tabs, nesting is effectively my navigation stack - except that it's a navigation tree, which also avoids the problem whereby you lose your "forward" stack if you go back and choose a different path.

And for tabs that I want to return to after closing, I use undo tab close - with TabMixPlus, I have the last 10 closed tabs available for reopening.

The combination of TabMixPlus and (especially) TreeStyleTabs are the reason I've never been able to take Chrome seriously.

Re: Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended

#63

Post by WiseWeasel »

I wish HN used target="_blank" for story links. I'm often reloading the HN front page, wasting everyone's network resources because I forgot to go back and closed the tab instead. Opening offsite links in a new tab should be the norm for most sites, with few exceptions. Bloggers probably shouldn't open links in new tabs, because I'm rarely following multiple links from a single blog, but directories and news listing sites absolutely should. In addition to sites where following an offsite link might interrupt my session in an annoying manner (his first case), if there's a high likelihood I'll want to navigate to multiple links from a single page, then they should open in a new tab.

Temporary digressions like contextual help text should probably get loaded into a hidden div and use JS to display/hide rather than open in a new tab.

Re: Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended

#64

Post by esusatyo »

barrkel wrote: post #62

At this point, I middle-click pretty much all links, and then decide to close the window or not depending on whether I want to continue the session or not. Since I use tree-style tabs, nesting is effectively my navigation stack - except that it's a navigation tree, which also avoids the problem whereby you lose your "forward" stack if you go back and choose a different path. And for tabs that I want to return to afte…

And those websites that don't honour middle-click or cmd-click to open in new tabs should die in hell.

Looking at you, LinkedIn.

Re: Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended

#65

Post by pyduan »

city41 wrote: post #58
pyduan wrote: post #52

I used to agree with the author, but these days I find myself actually preferring having a link opening in a new tab, so I'm not actually that irritated when a page uses target="_blank" if it's somewhat justified (ie. if there's a reasonable expectation that I'll click the link as a temporary digression, before going back to the original page). The problem is that sadly, closing a tab is often easier in practice than…

Right clicking is a native part of MacOS now and has been for quite a while. Apple's own mice ship with right click enabled out of the box as do the trackpads (I believe you are incorrect that it is disabled by default. Even the demo machines at the Apple store have two fingers to right click enabled.). I agree with the post author. Please let me decide when to open a new window. This is further complicated that link…

Thank you for the precision about Apple products. I may be wrong about the two finger gesture being disabled by default (edited my post to reflect that) -- it was my impression that it wasn't, but regardless I think we can agree it is not the most salient feature to new users. Using two fingers on the trackpad also means I cannot just reach out with my thumb to click but actually need to move my hand to perform the gesture.

My comment may have given the wrong impression -- I am not arguing that forcing links in new windows is a good thing, simply that it is not the anti-pattern people make it to be. In some cases like an app where accidentally leaving the page may lead to data loss or to a form resubmission, I actually think it's an acceptable trade-off and not an awful choice at all. I do agree with the author that in The Verge's case it isn't.

My comment was just based on the (totally subjective, of course) observation that to me that I tend to use a "open/close tabs" flow these days much more than "forward/backward in history", and that the "back" functionality seems less important than it used to be a few years ago because of changes in the way websites are designed.

Issues of choice aside (which seem to be your main grief; I have nothing to argue against it), the usability studies that condemn the practice tend use the fact that it disrupts the "back" functionality as one of their main arguments. My point being: if this functionality is not as important (as is the case for me), maybe this practice isn't so bad after all?

Re: Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended

#66

Post by andybak »

ecesena wrote: post #61
andybak wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience it's actually the opposite of what you state. Non-'techy' users understand the back button and they are completely flummoxed when a target=_blank link breaks this behaviour for them. They often don't notice the tab bar and don't realise that something unusual has happened that requires something other than their learned use of 'back'. You have to understand that you're going against the norm. If 80%…

Thanks for the feedback. This is actually the result of long thoughts and discussions, and I totally was (and, in general, am) against target=_blank. So I'm just reporting things as they are and as we decided in the team, I don't want to create a religion war :) Anyway, what made me change opinion is actually my behavior here on hn. I usually go through all the stream, select the news that I want to read and open the…

That's exactly what I do too but I try not to design UX for myself. :-)

Re: Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended

#68

Post by hnha »

dictum wrote: post #2

Tapping and holding for 2 seconds and then choosing "Open in a new tab" every time you want to open a link in a new tab in iOS gets tiring fast. I wish Apple would introduce a better UI for this.

It's quite perfect in opera mobile classic. Hold for about a second, maybe less, then the context menu appears where new tab is a millimeter to the top.

Re: Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended

#69

Post by pyduan »

jordanroher wrote: post #49
danielpal wrote: post #10

I completely disagree. In fact I find it worse when a link opens in the same tab and then I have to navigate back and find the place that I was at .vs. having to close a new tab I did not want. "And I think over a decade of user confusion and frustration resulting from target="_blank" backs that up." Do you have any links to to back this claim?

Sure do! This has been an issue in web design since 1999. Usability studies back this up. Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents (Jakob Nielsen, 2005) [0] The Top 10 Web Design Mistakes of 1999 (Jakob Nielsen, 1999) [1] Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design (Jakob Neilsen, 2011) [2] We gain nothing by "keeping the user on our site." The user doesn't care, to them it's all just content they want to look at. If t…

Are there any more recent studies with actual numbers and not just some vague talk about increased cognitive load (whatever this means)? Most I found seem to refer to the same 15 year old NN/g research report.

Since then a lot has changed, including the spread of multi-tabbed browsing (which one could imagine would have a huge impact on this issue) and drastic changes in the way web applications are designed. Is the "back" feature even still the most popular feature on a browser? While this claim would have been indisputable a few years ago, I seem to almost never use it these days unless I accidentally clicked on the wrong link. At least in my case, the evolutions I mentioned have changed the way I use my browser quite a lot. Less anecdotically, this does seem to be a more global trend since on Chrome for Android the back button has even been demoted to the "More" menu, while tab-switching has been given a more prominent spot (swipe from edge).

Not saying it has now become good to open links in new windows of course, but I'd be curious to see more recent research about the topic.

Re: Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended

#70

Post by gibbitz »

Morgawr wrote: post #47
dasil003 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have more important things to do than to attempt to put together statistical proof of this to empiricism-fetishists, but I can see in 15 years of web development that I've seen this (including in a proper usability lab with one way glass and eye-tracking, bla bla bla) create serious confusion with users vainly attempting to click back and not understanding why it doesn't work. That is for the average non-tech user.…

I very much doubt that the majority of the American population under 40 are "sophisticated users". And no, browsing Facebook and twitter every day does not count. Especially this day and age full of tablets, smartphones and specific apps, people are unlearning how actual Web browsing works. This said, personally I consider clicking on a link to an external resource/website to have a default behaviour of opening in a…

Can't agree more, especially when external sites history jack and require digging in history because the back button hold you on their domain. I understand that the whole thing is really a matter ofpreference and will never have a correct answer, but for me, this is the right answer.
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