External links in new window

[keme]

I have gotten used to the behaviour back at the oooforum, where links in forum posts would open a new window (or tab, depending on browser), preserving the view of the linking page. Is the "direct link" a conscious choice, or is it simply the phpBB default, requiring some coding work to make the branch into a new target frame?

[kingfisher]

I don't know the answer to your question but I am used to right-clicking links and selecting "Open in a new tab". Perhaps you should get used to that also.

[keme]

I don't know the answer to your question but I am used to right-clicking links and selecting "Open in a new tab". Perhaps you should get used to that also.

I do, but sometimes I forget . Guess I'll buy a proper mouse for the Mac too then, instead of the silly single button solution Apple provides (it looks nice, though...).

[kingfisher]

A single button mouse? Where has Apple been these last several (many?) years?

[Hagar Delest]

+1 for the request (even for the internal links BTW). That's the behavior in the French part of the forum and it's much more comfortable than middle-button-click to open in a new tab.

[keme]

A single button mouse? Where has Apple been these last several (many?) years?

Deep in the lifestyle and visual design realms, I guess.

Actually the "single button" is more like "no button" on the version I have. You click with the entire mouse.

So is that scary? No! Not compared to Apple's new mouse, the mighty one. With that there's no end to the clicking, I guess.

Being old fashioned (or perhaps just plain "old"), I prefer the visible buttons and wheels of the mice other folks make.

[DrewJensen]

sorry - but what was the question again....

Oh yes - you would much rather have the site make the decision for how to act for the site users. Currently it is a simple matter to do it the way YOU ( they ) want, in the same window ( tab ) or a new window ( tab ), but lets remove that choice.

[keme]

sorry - but what was the question again....

Oh yes - you would much rather have the site make the decision for how to act for the site users. Currently it is a simple matter to do it the way YOU ( they ) want, in the same window ( tab ) or a new window ( tab ), but lets remove that choice.

I think I can detect some sarcasm here, and behind it an answer to my initial question: The choice of behaviour is indeed a conscious decision.

Thanks!

[Hagar Delest]

I think I can detect some sarcasm here

But opening a new tab/window is more logical since the user is on a discovery path. He may get in dead ends and come back from start easily. Each new tab is like a cross-road where he can go back easily instead of using the back button until he finds the right point he's looking for (with the cache reload delay it can have).

We could set a poll for that. What's the behavior on other forums? French one and oooforum open targets in new tabs, Ubuntu forums don't.

[DrewJensen]

sorry - really no need for sarcasm...it has been an odd morning here.

Really, I prefer it the way it is here - but as I have said before, I am just one guy - if the majority would want the other behavior then we can make a change.

[TerryE]

+1 for Poll. Let's go with a majority vote.

[DrewJensen]

A vote is fine with me.

One small detail before we do that. When it is voted in...yes, I am assuming it will be...we will have a decision to make. Do we want to be w3c compliant or not.

phpBB 2 used the target="_blank" attribute of the <a> tag. The HTML 4 specification specifically removed that attribute.


Now from what I can find the technique de jour for is to now handle this with a java script!...yeah, that is what I said also...but if you want to be compliant that is the price.

Anyway - a script to do this is pretty straight forward...which is to say there is a fairly widely used one..so nothing to invent for this. So, if this is the choice then I would like to see us try to stay fully html 4 and xhtml 1 compliant. It will mean that for some very old browsers, ones that do not support DOM the link will still open in the current window, but how many of the users here are still using IE 4?

Anyone want to setup that poll? - if not, I will put one up on Monday during the day.

Edit: Just to be complete on this and by way of a note to self. There is a phpBB knowledge base article about using a different technique for this links-opening-new-windows

[TerryE]

Drew, talking about compliance, I use the Ff HTML validator add-on and a typical phpBB page has about 30 warnings on it. It would be really nice to get rid of these. The biggest culprit is the trick it uses to round the corners on all its shaded boxes. It does this by including a <span class="corners-XXX"><span></span></span> where XXX is either top or bottom at the head and foot of any DIV which styles a box with rounded corners. (Incidentally, the span.corners-top, span.corners-top span styles then use a b/g image which is floated left and right resp. which is cropped to quadrant of a 10 pixel wide circle, where the circle itself is transparent and the b/g white.) Anyway having empty tags such as <span></span> generates warnings, whereas <span>&nbsp;</span> achieves the same effect and doesn't.

I'll post the suggestion on the phpBB site.

[DrewJensen]

I agree that a good goal would be to try to bring the site warning free - I'll be looking for you post.

[keme]

Thanks for the info. It seems I needed an update on standards.

I didn't know about the deprecation of target="_blank" in the strict specification. A possible workaround might be target="openoffice_forum_sidekick" or something like that, though that may be even worse as it would open all links in the same window (new content overwriting old content). I'm not even sure if creating a new pane by this method is standards compliant, but I know I have used it...

If javascript or similar is required for full standards compliance, implementing that solution may give the most paranoid of us (or the ones with the most paranoid security admins) some trouble. I'm not sure I'll vote in favour of such a solution.

[DrewJensen]

As I said before it didn't seem like a big deal to me, as I run all newer browsers anyway and have an ambidextrous mouse, that can learn tricks too..so either a right mouse click > menu selection - or - click on mouse wheel ( middle button ) opens in a new tab.

I suppose another argument would be to just go ahead and use the deprecated syntax anyways - it will be a while before browsers stop recognizing it I would think.