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make links posted by users open in a new window

It always annoys me when I go to click a link on a Stack Exchange site within a question, comment, or answer and it targets the current tab, making it so I have to go back to return to the question I was on after going to another question or going to an external webpage.

All anchor tags should use target="_blank" by default. I'm sure it's quite possible, Gmail does it. I have just gotten in the habit of doing Ctrl + click so that it will open in a new tab.

I think this would be a good feature, because most of the time we don't want to leave the question we are on. We want to stay there, so we can answer the question. We just need to see the link in order to help answer the question.

It has just always been a pain trying to get back to questions we were on, so I propose that by default links in questions, comments, and answers open new tabs.

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marked as duplicate by Shogging through the snow May 14 '11 at 1:23

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

3 Answers 3

up vote 17 down vote accepted

Jeff Atwood, Stack Exchange CTO, retweeted this tweet a few days ago, which links to

.

Why is target="_blank" a bad practice? Because for every one person it pleases, it annoys ten others. Most people don't like their desktop cluttered with new windows (I suppose it's marginally better if your browser settings are set to open things in new tabs) because every website has decided to make leaving the website open in a new window. They're going somewhere; let them go and don't force them to come back.

Jakob Nielsen, the respected UI guru, has made this point clear.

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Personally, I hate when sites start launching windows all over the place without my consent. If I wanted a new window or tab, I would've opened one.

Use the tools available to you: as you mentioned, you can open links in a new window by using the middle mouse button or, holding Ctrl while clicking (Windows, Linux?), or by holding Command while clicking (Mac OS X). What's wrong with that? You want links to behave differently than normal, so you in turn have to do something slightly different. It's one extra key press.

The upside is that this works for virtually any link on any website, so you don't have to rely on sites adding target="_blank" to all their external links.

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If you have a mouse with a middle button or a clickable scrollwheel, just use that instead to open links in a new tab. No need for an extra key press.

As others already said, target="_blank" is bad for UX. It changes the default browser behaviour.

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