Posted by Jose on 12/23/05 04:13

What do you folks think of the target="_blank" attribute?

On the one hand, people should have the choice as to whether or not to
open a new window, and this defeats that choice (usually invisibly). A
new window can disorient people, defeat the back button, and use
(perhaps scarce) system resources. OTOH many (probably most) people
don't know how to open a link in a new window when they want to, and
it's a real pain to have to go "back back back" (waiting for each "back"
site to load) in order to get back to where you were.

On my site I have used it (I believe) judiciously, mainly opening new
windows into "foreign" sites and using the default (use the same window)
for most in-site links. On a site I used to work on, I gave a little
lesson on "trick clicking" at the top of the page, and left all links as
default.

Thoughts?

Jose
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