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.<p>"And I think over a decade of user confusion and frustration resulting from target="_blank" backs that up."<p>Do you have any links to to back this claim?
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.<p>I wish Apple would introduce a better UI for this.
I'm glad he clarified that. For non tech-savvy users who are using an application, I think `target="_blank"` is a really helpful way to avoid "I've lost my work!" support emails. Auto-saving their work is helpful too.<p>I've stood over my mother's shoulder too many times when she closes a tab and says "where did that last window go?" to agree with the blanket statement of "target blank is Bad".
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.<p>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.
IMHO, there should always have existed only one single type of link: a link.<p>The user should be able to choose to open it in this window, a new tab, or a new window.<p>Browser allow you to open a normal link in new tab or new window, but unfortunately I don't know any web browser that allows the user to force opening a link in the current tab :(
I'm confused. He says:<p><i>Forcing links to open in new windows has two main purposes:</i><p><i>1) To avoid disturbing an important session in progress for a temporary digression, such as FAQ/documentation links in the sidebar when you’re doing online banking.</i><p>And then:<p><i>I believe the former is justifiable</i><p>He gives a good reason for using target="_blank", and then...okay, what? Sounds like a good reason.<p>Even then, his second reason to <i>not</i> use target=_blank clearly sounds like a normative difference than a technical difference. He doesn't "like" the idea of keeping people on your site...so what? Don't use it, then. But you've clearly identified a positive ROI technique for keeping people on your site.<p>This post really confuses me.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>The combination of TabMixPlus and (especially) TreeStyleTabs are the reason I've never been able to take Chrome seriously.
> Most people know how to open your article’s outbound links in new tabs or windows, especially readers of a tech site.<p>Readers of a technical site? Maybe.<p>Average people? Not a chance.
Far worse, in my opinion, are sites that disable command/control-click (open link in new tab), either on purpose or b/c of lousy javascript.<p>I probably command-click 99% of links. How often do I, as a user, want to leave the current page and enter an entirely new context, within the same browser tab? Almost never.
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).<p>The problem is that sadly, closing a tab is often easier in practice than using the "back" functionality:<p>- many websites are poorly coded and break the "back" functionality, making it (sadly) unreliable. On pages that load content dynamically, results are not always predictable either<p>- my left hand is already positioned in such a way that hitting cmd/ctrl + w is trivial, whereas going back requires reaching all the way to the backspace button/the mouse/doing a multi-finger gesture on the trackpad<p>- if you had to submit content to get to the current page, usually going back will trigger a "confirm form resubmission" warning<p>- on mobile devices, the "back" functionality is not very prominently displayed. On Chrome, you have to click the "more" icon to access it<p>In addition, manually opening in a new tab (which requires right-clicking, middle-clicking, or ctrl/cmd + click) is not always as trivial as people imply:<p>- people who are using a trackpad do not have a middle button<p>- right-clicking is has not been part of Apple's design for a long time. You can perform them using cmd + click or using two fingers on the trackpad (I believe it is disabled by default), but it's not as convenient<p>- On a MacBook, the modifier keys (fn/control/option/command) are all placed next to each other and it's not always obvious which one does what. It's easy to get confused or to accidentally hit the wrong one. I've personally done option + click by mistake countless times, which opens a prompt to save the link, and it's always pretty frustrating<p>- the right-click equivalent on touch screens (long press) is a bit clunky<p>And this is coming from a tech-savvy user who actually knows about these options -- you'd be surprised at how many people don't. Of course, having the ability to make the decision is important for power users, but I can't help but wonder if for less sophisticated users the practice is not so bad after all. The usability studies I could find are pretty dated and I would not be surprised that usage patterns have changed.
This reminds me of an Etsy engineering talk about A/B testing:<p><a href="http://mcfunley.com/design-for-continuous-experimentation" rel="nofollow">http://mcfunley.com/design-for-continuous-experimentation</a><p>Etsy employees were so sure that customers would <i>love</i> having blank/multi-windows, because if you shop on Etsy a lot, how else would you keep track of interesting things while moving down the list?<p>According to slide 20, <i>70 percent</i> more people in the testing group gave up and left the site after getting a new tab.
Marco is right that the argument should have ended long ago. But he's 180 degress wrong about how it should have ended, at least based on the usability testing I have done or overseen.<p>A link in the middle of a sentence interrupts <i>any</i> mental session in progress. The 7th word in his post is a link...does he really think that anyone <i>intends</i> to click that click and never return to his site? To at least finish the sentence?<p>I guarantee that if he sat and watched 100 of his readers click that link, all 100 would use a contextual menu (e.g. right click) or chord (Ctrl-click) to open that link in a new window.<p>I could understand the argument against target=_blank back in the good ol' days of IE6 on XP, when browsers were not tabbed and OS's were not good at managing tons of windows. Back then creating new windows all over the place was annoying.<p>Those days are gone. With tabs and window management UI (like Expose), it is now no trouble at all for anyone to manage dozens of open web sessions at once. Adding one more is far more lightweight than whisking your readers away suddenly in the middle of a sentence.
I use the rule "If it links OUTSIDE of my site (I.e. different domain), I use target blank". If it's some kind of activity and navigating away would interrupt it, I'd rather use a modal..
The problem is that due to javascript, bizarre behavior from browsers, and now the new HTML5 back functionality, a lot of us have been trained to avoid the back button for fear of what might happen; I religiously open in a new tab anyway unless I'm quite sure I'm completely done with a page, so the default of "open in a new tab" is totally fine with me.
For folks on the web every day this makes sense.<p>I'm not sure my Mom, when browsing, knows how to decide when opening in a new window is important, much less <i>how</i> to do it.<p>It's also kinda nice when you're using an iframe, and you don't want the link to be followed inside a small subsection of the viewport.<p>I totally agree that it gets abused, but it does (at least seem to) have some valid uses.
I used to work on a site that served the medical profession (read large set of returning users with varied technical skill, but all fairly intelligent) and we had an icon next to non-html resources and links that were external. External links used target='_blank' which the site visitors surely learned quickly without having to Google it. I found this to be a fair compromise to keep users engaged on the site and be polite with your intentions. Most links were provided in the context and in support of the original page so keeping it open did not seem rude to me, but the proper UI.<p>NOTE: This was a not-for-profit, so ROI was not a factor in the decision, only usability with possibly a little liability protection thrown in as an added bonus.
No it makes a lot of sense in a number of situations today especially with ajax and dynamically updating web pages. I have a web application where users navigate to, lets say, invoices through a tree structure of Accounts -> Packages -> Invoices. Clicking on edit of the Invoice opens a new webpage. If they click the back button, users see the list of accounts all collapsed and will have to perform search, and navigate down again to the account. In this instance users have specifically asked me to open the edits in a new window.<p>In a few cases, I have edits open in the same tab as a popup, but in a number of instances that is not possible for pages with a lot of functionality/fields.
This functionality needs to be preserved so certain applications can follow efficient workflows.<p>An example of this can be found in a django admin site where a new modal is launched to enter a foreign key relationship, this would be unwieldy & distracting if it were to open in a new tab, taking the user away from information that may help them in making a choice and disrupting their flow.
Disagree, with an if/else: When the site is a set of links aggregated (Twitter, FB, Hacker News) I would prefer that the link open a new tab.<p>When it's a blog or a news site or anything else, the link should just be a link.
I agree that the Web is regressing on this as certain players have consolidated players and decided they can get away with it... I think all the Gawker blogs de-evolved some time ago.
Here's the more direct link:
<a href="http://www.marco.org/2014/01/10/target-blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.marco.org/2014/01/10/target-blank</a>