
Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended - SmileyKeith
http://www.marco.org/2014/01/10/target-blank
======
danielpal
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?

~~~
SDGT
Anecdotal evidence to combat anecdotal evidence, but where do we stop and let
the user make some damn decisions? Are users really too stupid to know
ctrl+click, middle click, or right click->open in new tab?

Personally I side with the author, as I open just about everything with middle
click, but I also have a lot of dumb users that rely on target _blank like
it's the only thing preventing them from spiraling into a psychosis filled
chasm of self doubt. The sheer number of people who have marveled at the idea
of opening a page in a new tab when shown kind of makes me uncomfortable.

I really want to fix this, and have users understand their browser more than
"it makes the googles".

~~~
pyre
> Are users really too stupid to know ctrl+click, middle click, or right
> click->open in new tab?

There are people that use their computer day-in and day-out that don't know
about alt-tab to switch between windows... The computer doesn't come with a
manual, and no one ever showed them. Not everyone that gets plopped in front
of a computer explores their new environment once they have a workflow down.

~~~
mintplant
Those same people may not understand how tabs work, either. They might not
realize where their previous browsing session went, or how to get back (since
the back button no longer functions as expected in the new tab).

~~~
pyre
I'm not throwing in on either side of the target="_blank" debate. I'm just
saying that making assumptions that surely all/most uses know how to X,
usually end in disaster.

------
dictum
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.

~~~
city41
Fighting a silly virtual keyboard on a phone gets really old fast too
(physical keyboards are vastly better). IMO phones and tablets have a long
ways to go in the usability department, hold for new window just being one of
their many problems.

~~~
snowwrestler
I had no idea that Blackberries ship with a dedicated "open link in new tab"
physical button.

------
tg3
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.

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".

~~~
cmelbye
But he didn't make a blanket statement of "target _blank is bad". He agrees
with you.

> I believe the former is justifiable, the latter isn’t

As he said in the article, it's justifiable if the user is in the middle of an
important session that they probably don't want to navigate away from. For
most people, reading a news article doesn't constitute that.

------
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.

------
Aardwolf
IMHO, there should always have existed only one single type of link: a link.

The user should be able to choose to open it in this window, a new tab, or a
new window.

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 :(

~~~
w1ntermute
Firefox: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/questions/959136](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/959136)

Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/open-in-this-
tab/n...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/open-in-this-
tab/nbfcicpgfkgghmoddmekmefmndmjajac)

------
natural219
I'm confused. He says:

 _Forcing links to open in new windows has two main purposes:_

 _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._

And then:

 _I believe the former is justifiable_

He gives a good reason for using target="_blank", and then...okay, what?
Sounds like a good reason.

Even then, his second reason to _not_ 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.

This post really confuses me.

~~~
gjm11
> and then...okay, what? Sounds like a good reason.

But one that doesn't (in his opinion, explicitly stated shortly after -- and
also, for what it's worth, in mine) apply to the particular behaviour he was
criticizing.

> But you've clearly identified a positive ROI technique for keeping people on
> your site.

But also one that (in his opinion, and for what it's worth also mine) is
likely to annoy and/or confuse users, which means two things.

1\. If you happen to care about users' welfare as well as about your "positive
ROI" \-- in other words, if you see them as people rather than as tools to be
manipulated in a way that brings you the most benefit -- then their annoyance
and/or confusion is a reason not to use the technique. (It might be outweighed
by that "positive ROI", but it's a reason.)

2\. Even if you do see your users only as tools for increasing your profits or
mindshare or whatever, annoying and/or confusing them may have bad long-term
consequences. They may stay on your site longer right now, as you intend --
but they may also be that bit more likely to abandon you for some other site
that doesn't annoy or confuse them so much. So by using this technique you
might be taking short-term gains at long-term cost.

(It seems to me that while #2 is a bit subtle and might well be too weak an
effect to matter much, #1 is really obvious. I am confused at your professed
confusion.)

------
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.

~~~
esusatyo
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.

------
throwaway420
> Most people know how to open your article’s outbound links in new tabs or
> windows, especially readers of a tech site.

Readers of a technical site? Maybe.

Average people? Not a chance.

~~~
larrys
One of the reasons I've always felt that the ubiquitous "tech guy"
undercharges for what he does is that he doesn't see what he does as being
that difficult and feels that he isn't justified in getting well paid for
something _so simple_.

This of course is an entirely separate topic than the point you are making
(which I agree with) but it's a similar issue with not being able to
understand "average" or "typical" or what we sometimes call "normals" (or is
often called "people in fly over country").

I was on my Mom's mac and a window popped up for her to do the a software
update. I said "oh you have to do that" (had security updates) and she said "I
don't need any new software" she had no clue.

------
subpixel
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.

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.

~~~
gumby
I agree -- why would someone disable this? Luckily so few people do this that
I simply don't visit those sites (looking at you, fandango!)

------
pyduan
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
using the "back" functionality:

\- 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

\- 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

\- if you had to submit content to get to the current page, usually going back
will trigger a "confirm form resubmission" warning

\- on mobile devices, the "back" functionality is not very prominently
displayed. On Chrome, you have to click the "more" icon to access it

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:

\- people who are using a trackpad do not have a middle button

\- 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

\- 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

\- the right-click equivalent on touch screens (long press) is a bit clunky

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.

~~~
city41
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 links can be configured to do just about
anything with JS. Nothing more frustrating than not knowing what a seemingly
inconsequential "help" link in a checkout process will do. Usually it pops
open a new window or reveals a hidden div, but sometimes it navigates away and
blows away the entire form you've filled out. Honestly the hyperlink as it
stands now is a very poor UI construct due to rampant abuse.

~~~
pyduan
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?

------
danso
This reminds me of an Etsy engineering talk about A/B testing:

[http://mcfunley.com/design-for-continuous-
experimentation](http://mcfunley.com/design-for-continuous-experimentation)

Etsy employees were so sure that customers would _love_ 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?

According to slide 20, _70 percent_ more people in the testing group gave up
and left the site after getting a new tab.

------
snowwrestler
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.

A link in the middle of a sentence interrupts _any_ mental session in
progress. The 7th word in his post is a link...does he really think that
anyone _intends_ to click that click and never return to his site? To at least
finish the sentence?

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.

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.

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.

------
elwell
I Ctrl/Cmd + Click most HN posts so I can start reading the comments while the
link is loading.

~~~
rfnslyr
TIL, thanks. I usually just middle click but this earlier.

~~~
elwell
TIL middle-click. :)

------
d0m
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..

------
10char
Another poor example that comes to mind is the search results on Quora, which
open with target=_blank even though they link to _the same site_

------
randallsquared
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.

------
raisinbread
For folks on the web every day this makes sense.

I'm not sure my Mom, when browsing, knows how to decide when opening in a new
window is important, much less _how_ to do it.

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.

I totally agree that it gets abused, but it does (at least seem to) have some
valid uses.

------
SethMurphy
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.

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.

------
arunitc
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.

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.

------
acoleman616
I think like assuming people know how to open links in new tabs on their own
(i.e. right click, "Open in New Tab") is completely misguided.

------
biscotti
This functionality needs to be preserved so certain applications can follow
efficient workflows.

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.

------
peterbe
But I really really like that when I'm in a single-page web app like Gmail,
all links are target=_blank.

------
jeffehobbs
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.

When it's a blog or a news site or anything else, the link should just be a
link.

------
threepipeproblm
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.

------
tylermauthe
Here's the more direct link: [http://www.marco.org/2014/01/10/target-
blank](http://www.marco.org/2014/01/10/target-blank)

------
jcomis
I think this is more opinion than web standard.

~~~
msandford
Yeah it definitely is. Thankfully there's no way to legislate "make it
impossible for links to open in new windows/tabs because this one site does it
and I think it's a bad idea in some cases." Because otherwise a thousand rabid
Marco fans would start a new PAC to do just that, breaking it's usefulness in
the many cases where you need to do the right thing and not destroy a session.

------
cookingrobot
There's an easy UI fix for this. Clicking back should close the tab.

Anyone want to build this Chrome add-on for me?

------
EmmEff
I didn't read the article. I am getting tired of Marco.

