To _blank or not to _blank

[Furbisms]

Hi all, I'd like some feedback on something. I have a bunch of outgoing links on my site (My own stuff, links to other people's sites, etc) and I'm wondering, should I make these open in a new tab? I didn't think about it but then I noticed another site doing it (For pixel clique links) and it made me realize I'm not actually sure. What are your thoughts on this? Am I completely overthinking?

[Blue]

I personally prefer when links open in a new tab, usually more convenient, as I would still like to be on the person's site even when going out of it.

[BlazingCobaltX]

I too prefer when outbound links open in a new tab, so I use _blank for every external link. Links to other parts of the website I don't do that for.

For people who don't know: If you use "blank" instead of "_blank", outbound links will all load into the same new tab.

[niko]

I prefer outgoing links pop in a new tab as well. I go out of my way to make sure they do in my own site and also style them with an ::after pseudo-element so users have a visual indication which links are internal/outgoing.

[loren]

i don't think there's a right answer! you can find arguments in favor of either option, so it's really a matter of personal preference than the "correct" way to do things.

my preference is that links do not automatically open in a new tab, for the same reasons xwindows mentioned in another topic:

Making a normal link (the kind that opens in current tab by default) open on a brand-new tab is as easy as using a single middle-click in most desktop browsers; no right-click menu was required.

    Or Ctrl+click, if your mouse/touchpad lacks middle button.
    Ctrl+Enter also works if you prefer keyboard.

i like having the choice! if i'm ready to leave, i'll do a regular click. if i want to keep the site i'm visiting open, i'll do a ctrl+click. another thing i like about ctrl+click is that it opens the link in another tab in the background, while keeping the current tab in focus. so if i'm in the middle of a blog post, it won't break up my reading flow and i can go check out the link when i reach the end of a section. or, if i'm looking at a button wall or a pixel clique, i can ctrl+click every single link to open them all in new tabs, then go through each tab one by one. if i was automatically sent to a new tab, i'd have to manually go back to the first one and re-find my place to open the next link. that being said, ctrl+click behaves the way i described even if the link has "target=_blank", so it doesn't bother me too much if it's there.

I didn't think about it but then I noticed another site doing it

when you noticed the other site doing it, did you like it? if the feeling was "wow, this is a cool feature", you should probably add it to your site! if the feeling was more like "wait, am i doing this wrong?", then don't worry about it! it's your site and you're allowed to make it according to your own preferences.

[Furbisms]

Thanks to all for the feedback!

I will say I definitely liked the feature, I was like, "oh, that's a good idea, I didn't even think to do that". I think I just overthink a lot when it comes to this stuff and it makes me very indecisive haha.

I also had no idea that's how people styled it to make it show the link is outgoing, I'll have to try that.

At this point I've gone ahead and added it to everything outgoing and I do really prefer how it makes my site feel so I'm thinking I'll stick with it.

[xwindows]

DO NOT meddle with it. Let each viewer decide for themselves.

In default non-meddling configuration, choosing to open link in current vs. new tab, is merely a matter of clicking the left or the middle mouse button. (0)

If you did meddle, you are intentionally interrupting the flow of visitors who prefer the reverse (1), and sidetrack them into taking 5 steps of action, just to open a single link in a way they prefer. And how many links you think they would wind up opening in each page? Likely many more than one; multiply the amount of annoyance with that.

While I would not stop reading a site over this, I find it very annoying to trek through such sites which their webmaster see fit to finger-wag their visitors down to minute move like how they step through each link. Visitors are people too, let them decide for themselves on what to do with a link.


(0) Or click vs. Ctrl+click, or Enter vs. Ctrl+Enter.

(1) More than half of the time, I prefer to open intra-site links in new tab, while opening inter-site links in current tab; and I do the reverse for the rest of the time. It is actually a very situational decision that hardly correlate with the link being intra- or inter-site.

[ヤーナム]

DO NOT meddle with it. Let each viewer decide for themselves.

In default non-meddling configuration, choosing to open link in current vs. new tab, is merely a matter of clicking the left or the middle mouse button. (0)

If you did meddle, you are intentionally interrupting the flow of visitors who prefer the reverse (1), and sidetrack them into taking 5 steps of action, just to open a single link in a way they prefer. And how many links you think they would wind up opening in each page? Likely many more than one; multiply the amount of annoyance with that.

While I would not stop reading a site over this, I find it very annoying to trek through such sites which their webmaster see fit to finger-wag their visitors down to minute move like how they step through each link. Visitors are people too, let them decide for themselves on what to do with a link.


(0) Or click vs. Ctrl+click, or Enter vs. Ctrl+Enter.

(1) More than half of the time, I prefer to open intra-site links in new tab, while opening inter-site links in current tab; and I do the reverse for the rest of the time. It is actually a very situational decision that hardly correlate with the link being intra- or inter-site.

I'll offer a little rebuttal here. You can't know how an individual user's browser is configured and can't know their preferences. It's up to a webmaster to choose a "reasonable default" and up to users to configure their browsers if they want different behaviors. It's not meddling, it's design.

Personally the rule of thumb I like is external links always open in a new window/tab. If I click a link and it opens in a new tab and I know I don't want your site open anymore, it's one click away to close the old tab or two keystrokes in Firefox (cmd + shift + [ to go back to the tab and cmd + w to close it).

[BlazingCobaltX]

In default non-meddling configuration, choosing to open link in current vs. new tab, is merely a matter of clicking the left or the middle mouse button. (0)

If you did meddle, you are intentionally interrupting the flow of visitors who prefer the reverse (1), and sidetrack them into taking 5 steps of action, just to open a single link in a way they prefer. And how many links you think they would wind up opening in each page? Likely many more than one; multiply the amount of annoyance with that.

This reasoning feels a little disingenuous because I could just as well present the reverse as more convenient:
(0) Click on link, "ah shit this opens in the same tab", back to previous page, right click + open in new tab
(1) Click on link, "yay it opened in the new tab"

To me, a link opening in the same tab feels more disruptive because I usually open many links and create a 'rack' of to-read items. Also I don't know to what extent not using _blank is a 'non-meddling' condition as much as it is unoptimised.

As the user above me said, you don't know someone's personal browser configurations and cannot consider all possible scenarios. Ideally, website creators do consider several situations, but everyone approaches these situations from a subjective point. If a site doesn't use _blank I find it slightly bothersome, but it would not deter me from further viewing the site. None of these preferences could be pushed as wisdom that should be universally applied, IMO.

[xwindows]

This reasoning feels a little disingenuous because I could just as well present the reverse as more convenient

My main point is not the actual preference (which is subjective; that's why I put my actual preferences in a footnote), but rather the amount of work needed by a visitor to open a link when he has the same preference vs. differing preference from webmaster-- which this part is objective. Since this part is apparently not clear to you, I'll restate it in a different format here...

In non-meddling configuration (no `target` attribute was specified):

• Visitor prefers current tab: 1 action needed (left click)
• Visitor prefers new tab: 1 action needed (middle click)

^ You would see that when the webmaster didn't meddle: no matter which preference user has, they could equally act on them in a single action.

But when webmaster meddled with `target="_blank"`:

• Visitor prefers current tab: 5 actions needed (right click, read and move mouse through 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th context menu options) suck it; this option isn't even available anymore; see the part right before the footnotes.
• Visitor prefers new tab: 1 action needed (left click)

If these charts don't make it clear to you about how disproportionate the effect that such meddling has on visitor who don't prefer the same as webmaster, and inequality it imposes... (or maybe you're just merely being "anti-choice") then I afraid we aren't speaking the same language, and it's no use for me to spend time to address it for you any further.

and up to users to configure their browsers if they want different behaviors.

This isn't like default font families, text colors, or link colors which were generally understood to be configurable by user in several browsers. Even mainstream browsers these days (1) do not let user configure default text/link colors anymore, let alone allowing them to override ones set by webmasters.

Since you brought up this point, please actually name at least one mainstream browser (or even off-mainstream browser that use mainstream browsers' rendering engine) that actually allow user to override (2) this open-in-new-tab link behavior in-UI without requiring add-on.

Because as far as I know, there isn't any (3), and I actually went to double-check as far as I could (4); but I still do welcome actual evidence about how I might be wrong here.

But if you couldn't, hand-waving that "user could just configure his own override if he doesn't like it" is just plain dishonest.


And now that I just re-tested on 3 brands of latest-and-worst browsers with largest "market share" (Chrome, Edge, Safari), I found that the reality today is even worse than what I originally perceived:

In today's browsers, if webmaster meddled and set `target="_blank"` on any link, that link will ONLY open on new tab/window; period. No mouse button, hotkey, or context menu could make it do otherwise. (5)

So I now take back my statement that gratuitous uses of `target="_blank"` were merely annoying: I now see websites which do so as being actively obnoxious and anti-choice.


(1) Like Chrome 138.0.7204.169, Edge 138.0.3351.109, and Safari 18.5. (Firefox 128.2.0-ESR on the other hand, still allows users to override fonts/colors)

(2) Not merely setting the default, because we are speaking about defying webmasters' gratuitous use of `target="_blank"` here.

(3) All graphical browsers on my machine don't, and I have also already double-checked with current-Chrome, current-Edge, current-Safari, and near-current Firefox ESR on others setups that I have access to (4); and results are unanimously NO: there is no any in-UI option to override such obnoxious behavior imposed by webmasters.

(4) This is an exhaustive list of graphical browsers and versions I have double-checked that they don't provide any in-UI option to permanently override obnoxious open-link-in-new-tab behavior imposed by webmasters: Firefox (2.0.0.20, 10.0.12, 56.0.2, 128.2.0-ESR), Pale Moon (25.8.1, 28.16.0), Chrome (138.0.7204.169), Edge (138.0.3351.109), Safari (18.5), Opera (11.51), Dillo (3.0.2), NetSurf (2.9).

(5) On the other hand, if webmaster did not meddle, but user wanted to open in new tab: using middle click, Ctrl+click, or right-click > Open link in new tab, all still work as usual.

[Melooon]

Wow target _blank is possibly the last subject I ever expected to find people getting passionate about 

I follow a few basic rules on my sites:

• All in-site links should be standard in-tab links, or frame target links when needed
• All external links should open in a new tab
• Links that might loose the visitor work should open in a new tab (Like links to the BBCode help page when writing a post here)
• Take over target _top should be used at terminus points (webrings etc) to avoid getting trapped in frame sites.

Usually that covers the bulk of it. To your point @xwindows I don't think its a visitors job to decide how links open; when you're in a webmasters space, its the webmasters job to coordinate the flow of traffic; designing that flow is part of the art of web craft. Plus it's generally a good idea to plan visitor flow anyway, since the majority of visitors are not power users who actively consider the different tab opening options.

Finally, there is a small security point that I think about (though it's less important for personal sites); Its good to get into the habit of having "target='_blank'" or "rel='noreferrer'" on any external links - this just improves privacy for your visitors and stops the site you are linking to from tracking their path; plus some older browser have bigger security flaws related to this.

Its definitely an important subject to think about though and ensure you've got your tab flow correctly designed 

[loren]

Even mainstream browsers these days (1) do not let user configure default text/link colors anymore, let alone allowing them to override ones set by webmasters.

this is not true. in your footnote you even mention that firefox does allow you to do this. most melonland forum members use firefox, which is worth considering. presenting font/color overrides as an impossibility, when most of us can do it quite easily, is a bit silly.

name at least one mainstream browser [...] that actually allow user to override (2) this open-in-new-tab link behavior in-UI without requiring add-on

in firefox, this is pretty easy!

• type 'about:config' into the address bar
• search for 'browser.link.open_newwindow'
• change the value to '1'

by in-UI, do you mean it has to be in the settings menu? if so, i'm not sure why that's a requirement for you. this is just three simple steps with no add-ons. there are ways to align your browsing experience with your own preferences!


speaking of preferences, i think it's important to point out that we are talking about personal homepages here. these are not government sites people may be required to interact with, nor are they public services meant to address the needs of as many as possible. the discussion need not be so serious. you talk a lot about choice, but what of the webmaster's choices? when i visit a personal site, i know that i am entering their world, where i am subject to their preferences, and that is part of the beauty of it. on any site there is a balance (or maybe a dance?) between the wishes of the webmaster and the wishes of the visitor. a webmaster can never please every visitor, so they might as well make something that appeals to their own taste. if their preferences clash too much with my own, i always have the choice to close the tab.

[BlazingCobaltX]

So I now take back my statement that gratuitous uses of `target="_blank"` were merely annoying: I now see websites which do so as being actively obnoxious and anti-choice.

In all honesty I learned something important from your posts (namely that overriding target=_blank is not as easy as the other way around) but must you argue it with such ferocity? Calling people "anti-choice" over the things they do on their personal website is rather hostile, especially with anti-choice having a much more severe connotation in real life related to abortion rights. "Visitor-unfriendly" would suffice, even if we disagree on what counts as such.

__

Preference aside, I think a more relevant question is whether websites need to communicate that a link will open in a new tab or not. That would probably clear up some initial annoyances. I personally don't do it, but I think it might suffice to add a heads-up somewhere. Any ideas?

[Melooon]

I personally don't do it, but I think it might suffice to add a heads-up somewhere. Any ideas?

It seems like an issue that maybe would be best addressed by browsers themselves; something like this is a nice solution! It changes the cursor on new tab links so you are aware if you are about to go to a new tab. Safari actually tells you when you hover a link "http://pie.yummy will open in a new tab", but its not super well highlighted.

To do it on site I think you can do something like this:

Code

a[target="_blank"]:hover {
  cursor: {CUSTOM NEW TAB CURSOR}
}

Im in favour of that; any way to make a site feel more dynamic is good in my books

[KiwiMeowo]

I add _blank to blog links because visitors might lose track of the time period tab when they return to the blog index. This post did remind me that this function can be annoying to close.

To do it on site I think you can do something like this:

Code

a[target="_blank"]:hover {
  cursor: {CUSTOM NEW TAB CURSOR}
}

Im in favour of that; any way to make a site feel more dynamic is good in my books

I didnt think of that, it sounds quite great!