The target="_blank" href attributes has been the subject of many discussions. When is it right to use it, should we use it at all, is it actually deprecated, is it good user experience, does it break user expectations, etc.
And I have a strange proposal for improving the standard behaviour in browsers – implicit target=_blank" in certain contexts. But let’s try to list when target="_blank" is a good idea:
- On pages with forms when the user may need additional information in order to fill the form but you don’t want them to leave the form and lose their input
- On homepage-like websites – e.g. twitter and facebook, where your behaviour is “browsing” and opening a link here and there. It may be applied to things like reddit or hacker news, though it’s currently not implemented that way there
- In comment/review sections where links are user-provided – this is similar to the previous one, as the default behaviour is browsing through multiple comments and possibly following some of them
The typical argument here is that if a user wants to open a new page, they can do that with either the context manu or ctrl+click. Not many users know that feature, and even fewer are using it. And so many of these pages are confusing, and combined with a sometimes broken back-button it becomes a nightmare.
In some of these cases javascript is used to make things better (and more complicated). In the case of forms, javascript is added to warn people against leaving the page with an unfinished form. Javascript is used to turn certain links to target=”_blank” ones. Some people try to open new tabs with javascript.
So my proposal is to introduce a
open-links="new-tab"– open a link tab for each link on the page or in the current div/section/…open-links="new-window"– same as above, but open a new window (almost never a good idea)open-links="new-tab-on-form"– only open a new tab if there a form on the page (possibly another requirement can be that the form is being partially filled)open-links="new-window-on-form"– same as above, but with a new windowopen-links="warn-on-form"– open the link in the same tab, but if there’s a partially filled form, warn the user they will lose their input
The default value, I think, should be new-tab-on-form. Security has to be considered, as malicious pages may affect the page that used target=”_blank”.
It might introduce new complexities and may confuse users further. But I think it’s worth trying to fix this important part of the web rather than leaving each website handle it on their own (or forgetting to handle it).
Published on Java Code Geeks with permission by Bozhidar Bozhanov, partner at our JCG program. See the original article here: Implicit _target=”blank” Opinions expressed by Java Code Geeks contributors are their own. |
