target="_blank"

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=E9rard_Talbot?=]

Jukka K. Korpela wrote :

Correct. And for the great majority of other people, too. You seem to imply
otherwise, though, thereby exposing your rather deep ignorance of the issue.

Your aggressive bashing was not justified here. I thought we were all
talking, discussing on a particular issue. You should not assume that
people are not receptive, open-minded on issues like this one, Jukka.

They do. Didn't you know this? Well, neither do many other people. And that's
really part of the problem.




Not fine. It's a symptom of the disease of trying to "keep the user on my
site", thereby quite often _making_ the user leave the site, rather than
preventing that.

Personally, I wouldn't identify with an icon an external site. Some
sites do that (e.g.: http://gemal.dk/ , http://www.microsoft.com/).
Opening external links into a secondary window is not what I would
recommend. But clearly identifying a link opening a new window or
recycling an already opened secondary window is what I do recommend.

That would break the fundamental rule "never bother the user with
technicalities". Besides, all communication fails, except by accident,
so many people will waste their time reading the warnings, yet failing to
understand what they try to say. And when your page is printed, the warning
will look rather stupid, won't it?




That's a further distraction, requiring users to get familiar with such
idiosyncratic symbolism. (Authors naturally apply the NIH principle, using
each their own "icons" for the purpose.)

I disagree. You can see 12 icons (and even 2 cursors) being used on
sites (even some major international sites) here:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/doc...28or_will_re-use.29_a_new.2C_secondary_window

I fail to see how these icons are not self-explanatory, intuitive for
users. Maybe some are better than others. Ideally, it would be best if
we all use the same icon for the same identification purpose. An icon is
better than no icon IMO.

Gérard

 

[Jose]

Yes, I have the same opinion for pdf files.

It wasn't clear to me what opinion that was. I agree they should be
identified as PDF. Beyond that...

They should...
1: not use any tricks at all? (giving the most control to the user,
but leaving the default clicking action up to the browser, which will
probably open it in the same window, which is probably an unpleasant
surprise)

2: use the target="_blank" attribute (as reccomended by some) making
the default action one which preserves the old window (while opening the
new one, which if closed because it's thought of as an app, won't
surprise the user by taking him off the web)? Users can still trick
click if they want to download (though I don't think many browsers let
you trick click into an existing window)

3: use some other trick?

(All the above presuming that the links are in fact identified as PDF files)

Jose

 

[Stan McCann]

It wasn't clear to me what opinion that was. I agree they should be
identified as PDF. Beyond that...

The opinion being discussed, as I read it, was whether or not to use
target=whatever to open windows *for* the user. My opinion (opening
new window for html) is there is not a valid reason to open a new
window for a page since the user can do it if the user wishes. If they
don't know how to do it their preferred way, they will learn if it's
easy enough, pay for a fix if annoyed enough, they will gripe
otherwise.
My opinion (opening new window for pdf) is there is not a valid reason
to open a new window for this either. There is not a valid reason to
force a download either.

They should...
1: not use any tricks at all? (giving the most control to the
user, but leaving the default clicking action up to the browser,
which will probably open it in the same window, which is probably an
unpleasant surprise)

2: use the target="_blank" attribute (as reccomended by some)
making the default action one which preserves the old window (while
opening the new one, which if closed because it's thought of as an
app, won't surprise the user by taking him off the web)? Users can
still trick click if they want to download (though I don't think
many browsers let you trick click into an existing window)

3: use some other trick?

(All the above presuming that the links are in fact identified as
PDF files)

I have a pdf extension installed so I get asked whether to download a
file, view in a tab, or a window, or cancel. A tab/window control
extension is installed so the windows that author's try to open, open
in the active tab.

Many user's don't know enough to use beyond what's already installed
and will only gripe rather than venture into the unknown of extensions
or software installations. They are still trying to beat the window
open stuff griping each time they lose their back button. They
download that huge pdf they don't want just to see one paragraph. And
they had to pay Uncle Whatshisname to come over to install Adobe for
the privilege of wasting their dial-up time.

Yet, some plug their ears and sing la-la-la to avoid hearing the user's
gripe. They continue to link to pdfs and use tricks to try to open new
windows and make them full screen.

I have a simple rule. Don't force the user to have what *you* think
they should have. Fifteen years of taking care of users have taught me
that. Have you ever heard "Why'd you install MS Office? I only use
WordPerfect" even though the answer is that it was mandated from up
above? Sometimes, it's easier to just uninstall MS Office and let up
above deal with the why. Then install it when it is their idea.

 

[Rob McAninch]

I agree they should be identified as PDF. Beyond that...

Consider this article:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/open_new_windows.html

They should...
1: not use any tricks at all? [...] which will probably open
it in the same window, which is probably an unpleasant
surprise.

As Yukka said in <[email protected]>
in reference to opening a PDF link in a new window:
"It does not solve the problem that everyone needs to meet a PDF
document on the Web for the first time in his life and learn
what to do with PDF documents."

Which has made me rethink my initial reaction to the Alertbox
mentioned above.

Even if you decided for usability reasons to open a PDF in a new
window, other websites may still use the standard content-type
headers from the server and normal links. Which means _your_ site
is now different. And it is commonly understood that visitors to
your site spend more time on other sites, thus it is often
necessary to use bad-design when that bad-design is familiar to
the user. See:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040913.html
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/991114.html

So the unpleasant surprise will likely only happen once or twice
before the user assimilates how to deal with a PDF (even if they
are annoyed and don't take action to make the browser act more to
their liking). And the unpleasant surprise will probably happen
on someone else's site

2: use the target="_blank" attribute [...] Users can still
trick click if they want to download (though I don't think
many browsers let you trick click into an existing window)

With Firefox I can drag a link into an existing tab and have it
opened there, if that's what you mean.

3: use some other trick?

In light of the discussion thus far, I would say identifying them
as a PDF file is critical. And possibly a suggestion to open the
file in a new window is best. E.g.

Here's a document [PDF] (open document in new window).

Where the 2nd document has the target attribute. Or use a more
verbose statement at the beginning of a list of PDF links. I
suppose if you use a lot of PDF files it would be worthwhile to
offer some information about how to handle them.

 

[Mark Parnell]

Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, Jake

If it really was an issue, then browser manufacturers would provide a
setting to override the spawning of a new window -- forcing the target
to be the existing window.

As others have pointed out, they already do.

Fine. That's what I'd do; seems to be quite a common practice.

Lemming mentality? ;-)

(It often annoys me when I take a link to another site only to find that
the page's author has been too lazy to open a new window for me.)

It's not laziness. In fact if they've considered the issue and still not
done it, then it's thoughtfulness. OTOH, authors who do set links to
open in a new window are writing the site for themselves, instead of for
their visitors. That's not laziness either, but it's selfishness.

If that's the behaviour *you* prefer, then configure your browser to
open links to new sites in a new window. But don't expect site authors
to foist your preferences on all their visitors.