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't open external links in a new tab.

Sometimes I forget to press the control button, and the page I'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.

[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.

[ahmedfromtunis → acheron]

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.

[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.

[ahmedfromtunis → DanBC]

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

[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.

[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.

[franze]

https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll awesome HN power user feature

[ahmedfromtunis → franze]

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

[pavornyoh → ahmedfromtunis]

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

[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.

[ahmedfromtunis → dgritsko]

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

[alpeb]

No.