
Ask HN: Do you find it annoying when an external link opens in the same tab? - ahmedfromtunis
Several sites I use every day (like this very HN and Stack Overflow) don&#x27;t open external links in a new tab.<p>Sometimes I forget to press the control button, and the page I&#x27;m reading is gone when I click on a link. Of course I can get back to where I was with a single click (or button press), but I feel betrayed, every single this happens.
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acheron
What? No. The opposite, really. If I want a link to open in a new tab, I will
do it myself. It annoys me much more when a site creates a new tab for me.

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ahmedfromtunis
Yep. I even read about some designers adding this to their no-no list. The
user _must_ have the choice to when to create a new tab. But living in a
country with just 3G on our mobile phones (4G is hopefully coming early next
year), it can sometimes be very very annoying.

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DanBC
I don't find it annoying. I use my browser features. It's more annoying if
you've types a few hundred words in a text entry box.

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ahmedfromtunis
That's definitely item 2 on my most annoying-stuff-list!

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dudul
A little bit. I think it's considered bad practice to create a link that opens
a new tab automatically, one is supposed to let the user decide how they want
to follow the link.

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detaro
I only really expect a new tab in apps that would be interupted/broken by
opening the page in the same tab or maybe inside long-form texts. Generally
pages, esp. aggregators like HN or reddit, shouldn't do it.

If you prefer it for specific pages, things like that are a good use case for
userscripts.

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franze
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll](https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll)
awesome HN power user feature

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ahmedfromtunis
Sounds cool, but unfortunately not enough karma to use it. Karma is a b __ __,
isn 't?

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pavornyoh
How many karma's does one need to have that feature?

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dgritsko
It does bother me, yes. However, I've gotten in the habit of just middle-
clicking on links (opening them in a new tab) regardless of the site I'm on.

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ahmedfromtunis
Using mostly my laptop, I sometimes forget to press the control button,
especially when on 'deep focus mode' and, boom :/

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alpeb
No.

