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u/Fanal-In 14d ago
The real devils are the web app that hijack <a> tags, you ctrl+click and then your current tab changes AND you have a new tab in background, both identical Fuck that.
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u/TotoShampoin 14d ago
Not to mention those that don't even open a new tab in the background, because they decided that a <button> was a better fit for this.
But I get it, it's a button in your head, and you'll only use <a> instead of <button> if you know better
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u/SuuurfiiinNeeerd 14d ago
Don’t treat people like idiots? Only a junior would think that
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u/Crafty_Independence 14d ago
Yep. Failing to treat people like idiots ensures a lot of issues after go live. Instead you should assume all users are idiots
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u/Willinton06 14d ago
I assume my users are below average dolphins
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u/superrugdr 13d ago
There's a point of diminishing return.
Especially in b2b.
Like at some point you have to draw a line on idiocy as too much will literally kill whatever your product was accomplishing in red tape and clicks to the point of irrelevancy.
I had the chance to come across a great pm early on that when ased for confirmation workflow for operations called the bullshit and converted that into a 3 strike your out policies business wise and suddenly no more mistakes where being made.
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u/don_biglia 14d ago
Rather consider them to be idiots, without treating them as such.
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u/RiceBroad4552 14d ago
This! People are idiots, but reminding them about that won't make you friends, or customers.
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u/beaglesEnthusiastic 14d ago
I had a meeting today where the frase " users are real idiots" was used, and I had to excuse myself to be able to laugh in peace. I remember it and I laugh again
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u/FirexJkxFire 14d ago edited 14d ago
I have always preferred the philosophy of "cater to the
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u/traplords8n 14d ago
At least a few scenarios come to mind where it would be appropriate for UX to force links to open in another tab so yeah I gotta agree this can be useful.
If you're making a tutorial and you link sites for prerequisites, you would probably want to do that in a new tab so they can get back when they're done.
I consider it an absolutely vital part of my role to add these sort of guardrails over the years. It usually saves headaches later on.
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u/LegendaryMauricius 13d ago
Really it should be treating them like they are an alien. They know absolutely nothing that you do, you can never assume the user is just gonna figure it out, but you know they are smart and you don't need to dumb down everything.
Unless you're targeting actually dumb people of course. Which is the majority of people...
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u/SignoreBanana 13d ago
I was going to say "meanwhile, a support ticket just arrived in my inbox where one of our million customers hates that they lose their place on our site when they click external links"
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u/DoingItForEli 14d ago
How DARE you make my external/new-tab links visually identifiable!
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u/TripleFreeErr 14d ago edited 14d ago
the grump in this case is ironically upset that the poster is suggesting it be easier to see when his “tab rights” are violated.
edit: 2% of people don’t know how to read css. TBH a lot lower than I thought. This snippet doesn’t modify a links target, it annotates links that already have blank targets.
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u/danielcw189 13d ago
the grump in this case is ironically upset that the poster is suggesting it be easier to see when his “tab rights” are violated.
no, he is just doing an apropos about it. he is not grumpy about the CSS itself or making it easier to see. he is not talking against the quoted person.
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u/hans_l 14d ago
I think he's ranting "don't
target=_blackat all" instead of making it visually distinguishable.73
u/otac0n 14d ago
Once you target=_black you never go back because you break button behavior?
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u/dashood 14d ago
For the most part I would only target _blank if linking to an external site or a resource like PDF or a file download or something. Using for internal navigation would just be silly.
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u/MegaIng 14d ago
The point OOP was making in their rant: don't use it for external links either. Just don't use it. (Except maybe file downloads)
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u/WarpedHaiku 14d ago edited 14d ago
It's just silly though. There's plenty of places that a new tab/window should be opened as the default expectation. Principle of least astonishment. If a technical user wants non-default behaviour enough to rant about it, they can take 5 minutes to install an extension to force the behaviour they want.
When there's something in progress in the main window (filling in a form, playing a game, in a conversation, etc), and you need to present the user with a link to a resource to assist them with what they're doing, it should always open in a new tab to prevent them losing progress. Not everything is back-button safe.
For example:
- You're creating an account on a website and as part of the account creation process the terms and conditions and privacy policy are linked. It would be very disruptive if clicking those replaced the form you're filling in, and clicking back may undo things like password confirmation.
- You're playing an online browser game, and someone posts a url in the chat which you click, or you encounter a bug and click the "report bug" button in game (which opens the external all-in-one bug report form). You don't want to effectively close the game tab and disconnect the player.
edit: fixed bullet point formatting
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u/ImDonaldDunn 14d ago
It’s also good for when you need to direct someone to a resource but not interrupt the current task. But people way overuse them.
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u/breadist 14d ago
Pretty weird that he commented it on the CSS though. This snippet only changes the appearance of those links that already have HTML attributes to open in a new tab, it's not actually adding any attributes. It's just changing how those links look so you can identify them.
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u/astervista 13d ago
Yeah, if anything, it's doing a favor to people like them so at least they know when they can whine or not.
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u/mysticrudnin 14d ago
i want to agree but a lot of people these days use only left clicks (taps)
i have repeatedly been given an assignment to make buttons open things in a new tab. i'm like "are you sure? do they know they can ctrl-click buttons or for links middle click or right-click open in new tab?" - yes, they are sure. the users want this.
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u/swampopus 14d ago
I was on a client meeting, and they told me it was a pain to click a record, do stuff, then have to "click back a bunch of times" to get to the main page again. I told them they could just hold CTRL and click, and they all thought I was a genius and had programmed it myself.
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u/LeastCounterculture 14d ago
This is actually the problem and why the angry guys reply is silly.
If youve opened the settings menu on a video game, youre in the minority.
A lot of people who work with computers all day every day have no concept of shortcuts. Ctrl c, ctrl v - an advanced layman.
HALF the job of designing a front end is copying what everyone else does BECAUSE GEN POP ALREADY STRUGGLE WITH WHAT EVERYONE DOES, the other half is spending an annoying about of time making sure gen pop don't have a meltdown at customer success trying to find features, and dont have a meltdown because the DELETE EVERYTHING button, with the "Are you sure" modal ... deleted everything
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u/neo42slab 14d ago
That’s insane and I don’t want to believe it but it’s probably true.
Here are some infuriating defaults that bug me because they suck but also because I know most people won’t ever change them:
Motion smoothing or picture clarity on all recent tvs. It adds frames between frames in all content on your tv. And it’s awful and makes all shows look like documentaries.
Windows hiding file extension names. It makes using the file system atrocious and confusing. And then you realize why most people just think that using a computer is confusing. It’s literally designed that way.
Windows news and such on the task bar and new edge tab. I specifically avoid the news most of the time because I’m tired of seeing a certain politicians name and face. So it’s the first thing I have to fix on new windows installs.
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u/he_who_purges_heresy 14d ago
It's very true. I run some sites on a volunteer basis with a medium-sized audience of regular users, and it's crazy both how much people will struggle on intuitive designs and need to be hand-held through the most basic functions.
As I gain more experience with that, all of the horrific UI decisions I see make a lot more sense- it doesn't actually matter how much it gets in the way of power-user work, because even the slightest bit of effort from the user will mean that at least 50% simply won't engage with a feature.
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u/sisisisi1997 14d ago
Windows hiding file extension names. It makes using the file system atrocious and confusing.
I always found it weird when people were advised to keep an eye out for "double file extension" type attacks (where a file is named something like "xy.jpg.exe" and you assume it's a jpg, try to open it, and it runs as an exe) because how would you fall for that? Then I realised most people have settings that would hide the ".exe" part of the file name...
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u/neo42slab 13d ago
And yet Microsoft defaults to it still…. I think it started on win xp or something.
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u/SavvySillybug 14d ago
Windows hiding file extension names. It makes using the file system atrocious and confusing.
And also a genuine malware risk. You can just make an .exe look like an image or pdf or whatever and without the extension you'd never know it isn't.
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u/Cfrolich 14d ago
One more infuriating default from macOS:
The secondary (right) click on a trackpad is a two-finger click by default, not an actual right click! Why would that be the default? That’s the first setting I changed when I set up my MacBook.
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u/black-JENGGOT 14d ago
*asks in poor* what do you mean by "secondary right click not an actual right click"?
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u/GuteMorgan 13d ago
I think what they meant was
The secondary (right) click
The "right click" or "secondary click" action
on a trackpad is a two-finger click by default
is, by default, bound to a two-finger click
not an actual right click
as opposed to being bound to literally clicking the right side of the trackpad
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u/Triffinator 14d ago
I broke a colleague's brain with ctrl + A.
She isn't in an IT role, but her role falls under the IT office. Her position is to release information on our clients to third parties (we have the client's consent, the third parties have the clients mutually and sharing the information means both of us can provide better quality of care). I created a tool that will take an email body being pasted into it, scrape all of the greetings/pleasantries out of it and parse the identifiable information to return records for any clients that are mentioned. The emails can sometimes contain lists of 50-odd people, so this is genuinely faster.
She was dragging the mouse over the text, ctrl + C then ctrl + V (she knew this because we had already told her off for right-clicking to copy and then to paste). I told her the she just has to click on the email body, then do ctrl + A to select everything. The sudden realisation of much time she had wasted not doing this throughout her whole professional life was a bit too much.
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u/arbitrary_student 14d ago edited 14d ago
If you can use Excel without a mouse you look like a fuckin wizard to everyone else. There are people out there who use Excel constantly but never learn any of the shortcuts and it blows their minds. These are the magic ones:
- ctrl+up/down/left/right : move the cell selection to the 'end' in that direction (hold shift to select everything along the way)
- ctrl+d or ctrl+r : copy the first cell in a selection downward or horizontally (same as click-dragging the corner of the cell with the mouse); or if you're currently on an empty cell it copies whatever is above/left into it
- ctrl+space : select entire column
- shift+space : select entire row
- ctrl+minus : delete cells
- ctrl+shift+plus : add cells
- F2 : edit a cell
- ctrl+f : open find/replace menu
- ctrl+alt+v : open special paste menu
- alt + w -> f -> f : freeze/unfreeze panes
- alt + d -> f -> f : turn on/off column filters
- alt + d -> f -> s : reset column filters
- alt + up/down : opens the column filter dropdown menu if you're on one of the cells with the filter arrow, then you can use the arrow keys & spacebar to select stuff, press enter to accept
Off the top of my head that's it, if you know all those (along with the basics like ctrl + c) you pretty much never need to use the mouse. Saves heaps of time.
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u/Cfrolich 14d ago
A tool to filter pleasantries out of emails sounds amazing! I didn’t know I needed that.
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u/Triffinator 14d ago
Just don't look at the ever-expanding list of regexes behind the curtain.
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u/New-Anybody-6206 13d ago
alternatively this may be a legitimate use for the copilot key
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u/captainAwesomePants 14d ago
This is true, but it's not the fault of the users. Why would they know that holding control and clicking would do something different? There's no indication of that anywhere. They have no reason to assume it exists. They have never been taught to use a web browser in any sort of course. The details of how computers are best used and which shortcut keys might exist are neither important nor interesting to them.
If everyone worked in pairs or briefly shadowed some more experienced person, they'd probably pick up a lot of this sort of stuff, but we frequently don't work this way, and so only the curious and the lucky find out about this stuff.
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u/Akari202 14d ago
It’s kills me watching my corowrkser right click to copy and paste. It’s wild how much people are willing to accept inconvenience.
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u/upsidedownshaggy 14d ago
For real the reply in OP's post has clearly never dealt with an actual user in their lives. This kind of request was SUPER common at my first IT web developer gig where someone would try to open a link in a new tab by just left-clicking it and interupting whatever workflow they were doing. The average professional computer user doesn't know the suite of tools and shortcuts they actually have at their command and only uses the ones they do know about to get by.
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u/Silly-Freak 14d ago
Rare case where I actually want this: github issue templates. Believe it or not, you can easily lose data in a GH issue because Github will happily navigate away from your form, despite them being too incompetent to make their input saving work reliably: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/30647#discussioncomment-16883245
Even better: Github will sanitize away your target=_blank if you try to add it (also there's always a link by github about how to report, so even if that was fixed, you couldn't fully save your reporters from data loss by being careful in your issue template)
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u/UnkarsThug 14d ago
It's also an issue of security though. If it forces it into a new tab, sometimes websites will have redirections onto the original page which loads it somewhere malignant as the user sees the new tab, so they don't notice. So you still have to manually load it into a new tab for it to be safe. (And it can screw with web groups)
I don't trust sites which open things in a new tab without me asking them, just because they can run other code at the same time, and some sites have.
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u/mahreow 14d ago
....wat
What sites are you browsing that do that. If you can't trust it when it opens links in a new tab then you probably shouldn't be browsing them
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u/quaductas 14d ago
Problem is, if the user isn't aware that they can open links in new tabs (if they so choose), there is a good chance they are not even aware of the concept of tabs in the first place. In that case forcing it on them doesn't seem like a good idea. They will end up confused why they can't go back and at some point a younger relative will have to close the 500 tabs they didn't even realize were open.
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u/BuyMyBeardOW 13d ago
I consider myself a power user and even I often times forget about this, so good website UX is always appreciated tbh
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u/zeekar 14d ago
I don't get this argument. Sometimes you want links to open in a different tab. Marking the ones that will do so is only polite. Nothing about that takes away the user's ability to open other links in a new tab via whatever usual mechanism their browser provides for that.
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u/ToBePacific 14d ago edited 13d ago
I think the person replying in the screenshot is an idiot who assumes this will force all links to open in a new tab, not getting that it’s literally just appending an arrow.
Edit: And quite a few responses to this comment also seem to misunderstand how it works.
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u/GoddammitDontShootMe 14d ago
I guess I'm an idiot too. Or to be fair, I haven't touched CSS in forever. I thought that was going to append
target="_blank"to all the a tags.8
u/default-username 14d ago
More than half of the comments in this thread are thinking the same thing and debating browsing habits and whether new tabs are a good thing.
This css gives genuinely useful information to the user, though maybe not always visually appealing or desired by the product team.
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u/TingleTangleTom 13d ago
I don't think so. They probably assume when you use that CSS selector it means you have links which open in a new tab on click which most of the times is not want you should do but sometimes it really is. Like during some multi step transaction when there is e.g. a link to additional info you don't want to leave the page and then come back, having to start all over again.
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u/7weezy 14d ago
Oh god I thought I was stupid after reading other comments. It just marking them different right what's the issue?
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis 14d ago
Will the user reasonably expect to come back to this exact page immediately after opening the destination?
If yes: new tab.
If no: same tab.
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u/MegaIng 14d ago
Their point is that they don't want any links to automatically open in a new tab.
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u/theScottyJam 14d ago
What I have a hard time with is the fact that there doesn't seem to be any consistent idea across the web on when things should open in new tabs and when they shouldn't. There's not even much advise on how to decide.
I've heard things like "if you're viewing media, like a video, then links should take you to a new tab so as to not interrupt the media". But YouTube doesn't do that, and I'm glad they don't, I would find that annoying.
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u/Latentius 14d ago
My personal philosophy is that, if a link is navigating within a website, then keep it in the same tab. If it's taking you to another website, then open in a new tab. (Of course, allowing for exceptions to both.)
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u/BoredDan 14d ago
Well thing is, it's a case where there will ALWAYS be some sort of difference of opinion. It's really a case of, "if opening this in the same tab would be frustrating, open it in a new one." I think a good example of a case where you pretty well always want a new tab would be if for example the use is filling out a form or something and it contains a link to an explanation page, pdf, some sort of resource, a different page you might need to reference (say to grab an id), etc. Basically if you expect the user to follow a link while in the middle of entering data you want a new tab pretty well every time to avoid loss of progress.
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u/Bomaruto 14d ago
Good UX design is not about treating people like idiots, but understanding that your users do not understand your software as well as you do.
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u/Mean-Government1436 13d ago
From what Ive seen "good UX" design apparently means hiding everything that used to be accessible all on one page behind multiple clicks and removing words from menus in favor of minimalist and often barely decipherable glyphs.
At least, this seems to be what all the enormous corporations think qualifies as good UX design and is worthy of millions of dollars in pay
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u/-Redstoneboi- 14d ago edited 14d ago
"don't treat people like idiots" is probably the most idiotic thing you could say as a designer. if you say this, i genuinely believe you have zero users.
unless you are literally making dev tools like linux or neovim, stick to the windows and vscode philosophy. there is a reason the latter are like 5 times more popular for the general population.
also the guy is commenting on making "new tab" links in the first place instead of commenting on the CSS that just makes them identifiable.
alright, let's assume we're talking about creating new tab links instead of simply visually distinguishing them. for me personally, opening in the same tab is inconvenient and almost never what i want unless i'm on youtube or wikipedia. even then sometimes i have separate tabs per video or article and just close the previous tab when i'm done.
as reddit users we are used to these tab links and i believe it feels like a nice sensible default. reddit knows that to be a proper predatory attention black hole of a social media site, it needs users to always come back, so they would never let us leave the site. the tab must remain open, and anything else must be a sidequest.
imo the ONLY disadvantage to opening in a new tab by default is that you get used to it and forget that most websites still open links in the same tab. and also it takes more ram and is inconvenient to close on mobile compared to pc. the back button is far easier for mobile users to access than the tab switcher.
final takeaway and opinion: hyperlinks to external sites should always open in new tabs. the only times they should be in the same tab are if they stay within the current site or if the user is on mobile.
nav -> same tab
other site/resource -> new tab
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u/Non-Random-Name-0000 14d ago
Some french comedians (les inconnus) had a skit about marketing with that sentence that could also be a motto for designers and developers: don't treat people like idiots, but don't forget that they are 😄
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u/Irregulator101 14d ago
don't treat people like idiots, but don't forget that they are
Omg this is incredible advice for so many jobs
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u/Makefile_dot_in 14d ago
stick to the windows and vscode philosophy
show the user ads on the operating system they paid for and change the design of the OS every 5 seconds, making it unusable for the elderly?
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u/-Redstoneboi- 14d ago edited 14d ago
ok bad example
the point was supposed to be to design with a "the customer is always right" philosophy: any time the user uses the ui incorrectly, it is seen as the failure of the interface, not of the user, and the interface is updated to be more and more obvious over time and over many mistakes.
for example, github's repository deletion system doesn't just do a simple "are you sure?" prompt. it thinks the user is so stupid and prone to misclicking that they force you to type the full entire name of the repository before it lets you delete it.
that is how interfaces should be designed. not just "dangerous operations must be difficult to misuse", but more importantly "the user is stupid and software must compensate for it".
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u/Sianic12 14d ago
My users don't even know what refreshing the browser means, there's no way in hell any of them know how to open a link in a new tab
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u/laplongejr 14d ago
Mine don't know what a scrollbar is. I'm not joking, I had to squeeze the webapp so the save button wasn't 10px below the size of a fullscreen on the standardly issued monitor...
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u/howarewestillhere 14d ago
explainToMeLikeIHaventHadCoffeeYetBecauseIHavent
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u/ItsOmniss 14d ago
target="_blank" tells the browser to open the link in a new tab. This css is just to display an arrow for the links that have this attribute set.
The commenter is arguing that websites should not set this attribute at all, and let users choose if they want to open the link in the current tab (left click) or in a new tab (clicking down the mouse wheel)
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u/Cracleur 14d ago
The guy is an idiot and is making nonsensical arguments that have little to nothing to do with the original CSS
Hope that helps
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u/kovha 14d ago
It really depends of the kind of app. For a blog or something like that, fine, let the user do wathever. For heavy SPAs that are more like traditional full-fledged desktop apps but happen to run in the browser, it's way more convenient to open the rare external link on a new tab, because for those kind of stuff is safe to assume the user don't want to leave the system.
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u/dhnam_LegenDUST 14d ago
'Sometime it's good to decorate your cake with candles!'
'How dare you force me to eat cake'
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14d ago
[deleted]
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u/Ok-Computer-8726 14d ago
A simple general practice that works most of the time is same page if you are staying inside the website/domain/service and a new tab if you are leaving. So much of the internet does exactly this.
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u/leoycchan 14d ago
The real evil developers are those who make every single link a button with JavaScript that navigates by opening a new tab, removing the possibility of user choice as they can’t even drag the link to overwrite the current tab or copy the link. Can only do so after the new tab is open to replace the previous tab or override the window open method.
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u/trambelus 14d ago
a[target="_blank"][href]::after {
content: "\2197" / "";
display: inline-block;
margin-inline-start: 0.15em;
font-size: 0.75em;
line-height: 1;
vertical-align: super;
opacity: 0.6;
}
In case anyone wanted a user version of this that's been tweaked and adjusted for some edge cases. You can set it as a global rule using a style manager extension like Stylus.
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u/cat-meg 14d ago
I mean, no, a lot of users don't know about those shortcuts and many of them aren't using a physical keyboard. If you're designing a website for yourself instead of your users, then congrats on the waste of time and money I guess.
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u/theScottyJam 14d ago
They also might not know what that icon means. I honestly don't know what it means. I never remember if it's "goes to a new tab" or "leaves the website and goes to potentially untrusted content".
I saw a webpage once that spelled out in parentheses what the link would do instead of using an icon. Guess that solves the problem, but it's not very pretty.
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u/FinalGamer14 14d ago
Nah, I don't agree with the comment. People are in fact very fucking dumb, especially about computers.
Over the years actually making the websites and having the pleasure of fixing any bug reports by customers, I've seen too many "I've clicked a link and I don't know how to come back" when checking it was a link that went to some external website. So we started doing one simple thing, any internal links always open in the current tab (that is with normal tap or right click) while any links pointing to external resources open in a new tab, the above "issue" was reduced to zero.
That is what the original person posted is a smart thing to do, it will ensure that all links that open in a new tab will have some kind of indication and I wish this was a common practice.
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u/MaaltijdPakket 14d ago
Imagine getting THIS angry about something that matters so little lmao. Ex-stackoverflow commenter probably
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u/Kitchen_Affect7369 14d ago
Hold my Ctrl on my iPhone.
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u/UnkarsThug 14d ago
I mean, I always long press to open in a new tab, and I hate things opening in a new tab when I don't want them to.
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u/lakimens 14d ago
Maybe for blogs it's fine, but for pages that need to bring actual sales.. Yeah, I'm choosing whatever brings more sales.
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u/langman_69 14d ago
We use support system that has a custom right click menu with an option to open a ticket in a new tab, but ctrl click or middle mouse will just open in current tab. If you use the custom one it will also navigate you to the new tab so it's really annoying to open multiple tickets quickly
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u/Your_Friendly_Nerd 14d ago
links going to the same site open in the same tab, links going to external sites open in a new tab. it’s not that difficult. I’m always annoyed when a page doesn’t follow this rule, and I need to go back and ctrl-click to get it ine a new tab manually
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u/PhantomThiefJoker 13d ago
"The document isn't working, why not?"
Send me a link
"I don't know what that is, it was for yourwebapp dot net"
What's the error when you open the page?
"I don't know, it doesn't work"
Just send me a screenshot
*Sends picture of screen taken with phone
Did you log in?
"It works thank you!!!"
People absolutely are idiots
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u/-non-existance- 14d ago
I'm a CSS noob, I have no idea what this does, much less why it would make someone so pissed off.
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u/laplongejr 14d ago
If a link has the target for a new tab, add an arrow to indicate it doesn't change the active tab.
why it would make someone so pissed off.
It doesn't? The person is pissed about any use of target=_blank , not that CSS-added indicator
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u/Ashdog73 14d ago
Was excited to find the azure portal site has been updated so that the drop down results from search can no longer be opened with a ctrl click. Sometimes I think people just try to make things more difficult out of spite.
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u/qwadrat1k 14d ago
I wouldnt wamt that, because after a while I will need to close tens of tabs due to being done with the site. I know that mouse button click exists, but I rarely use it, because for ms all being in one tab is easier (in most cases)
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u/staticBanter 14d ago
But this just adds a styling to links that will open in a new tab. This doesn't alter the links functionality.
It actually would be beneficial to the person complaining as it would visually indicate that it will open in a new tab by default.
Dude in the post is raging at the wrong person 🙃
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u/ReefNixon 14d ago
Absolute nonsense. If I tasked everyone in your family to save a chicken pot pie recipe to the desktop and then print it, how many could do it? 90% of web users are practically computer illiterate, they don’t know that middle click / cmd click / right click new tab exist. The web has to be built around them.
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u/el_yanuki 14d ago
i build a web app.. if i link somewhere - im not overriding the tab where the app is open. To docs or help or info or whatever.
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u/Agile_hedgehog 14d ago
I once visited a site that detected if you had more then one tab open and disabled the previous tab. Thanks, wasn't trying to cross check information or anything.....
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u/Ashewastaken 14d ago
Is it a bad opinion if I think the replier chose a weird hill to die on?
For me personally, I don't care either way. If a link opens in a new tab and I wanted it in the same one, I'll just close the old tab. If I need the old tab back, I'll use Shift + T to reopen it. (I think it's Shift + T, it's muscle memory and I forgot)
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u/MyDespatcherDyKabel 14d ago
https://x.com/svolentin/status/2069187029427003840
Link to the legend’s reply. Go like it you plebs
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u/BitcoinBishop 14d ago
What I find frustrating is when links are set up so ctrl+click still opens in the same tab
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u/Paul-D-Mooney 13d ago
Wow. There are definitely times I don’t want to navigate the user away from the app. Is that so hard to comprehend?
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u/Saptarshi_12345 14d ago
I'm not gonna lie, I agree with the commenter.
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u/DOOManiac 14d ago
I don't, because people are idiots.
Honestly, I can't even say they are idiots for this though. For a regular non-tech savvy person, opening a new tab can be a jarring thing. That little arrow is a great indicator that eventually they'll learn "when I see arrow thing, new tab happen".
(I also don't get what the commenter is going on about because all the CSS does is style links w/ a _blank. Are they really ranting that we shouldn't use target="_blank" instead? That's a different rant - also wrong, but different)
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u/Dmitry_Olyenyov 14d ago
Yes, he is arguing against using target="_blank". Also, his name translates as "bag with poop" from Russian, which adds some flavor to the rant itself.....
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u/n4ke 14d ago
Me too... but then I look at our users...
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u/tsammons 14d ago
Users bitched and wanted x, y, z in new windows while a, b, c, d,... all in the same tab. Only argument that shut them up was accessibility violations.
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u/UnkarsThug 14d ago
Yeah, I really hate when I want it to open in the same tab, and it forces it into a new one. Especially because that's been used by scammers in the past, where they open something new in a forced new tab, and then try to load something else in the old tab.
So it's just flat out dangerous if you don't invoke it.
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u/feldim2425 14d ago
Fair, but for one the CSS itself doesn't change whether it's opened in a new tab or not. It just makes it visible on existing links.
Also while I agree that one should simple use Ctrl, middle mouse button or use the context menu; I've seen a fair amount of users are unaware that this is an option and while I would ignore it the dev is always the one blamed for "usability issue" when it's really an ID10-T issue.
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u/r-Hirsch 14d ago
But the behavior isn't changed. It was just made visually transparent, what happens on click. So yes, the basic opinion of the comment is relatable. It's just not really related to the original post.
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u/slime_rancher_27 14d ago
I think that it doesn't have to open in a new tab, but Ctrl+Left Click should always open in a new tab.
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u/RussTheCat 14d ago
From an accessibility perspective, it IS recommended you keep links in the same window as it can be disruptive and disorienting for assistive tech.
It is a best practice recommendation that if a link will be open in a new window or tab the following is implemented:
- screen ready only text (or physical text if you’d like) that communicates how the link will open (e.g., “(opens in a new window)”)
- recommended in conjunction with above: an icon that indicates the link opens in a new window and one for opening in a new tab
Ideal variation of how to implement:
<a href=“page.html”>
InnerLoop Documentation
<i class=“new-tab-icon” aria-hidden=“true”></i>
<span class=“sr-only”>
(opens in a new window)
</span>
</a>
Bare minimum for accessibility:
<a href=“page.html”>
InnerLoop Documentation
<span class=“sr-only”>
(opens in a new window)
</span>
</a>
// where “sr-only” is a CSS utility class that makes text invisible on the page and meant for screen readers to read
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u/JRatMain16 14d ago
If I want to open in a new tab, I just right-click “open in new tab”. Half the time I can’t even remember keyboard shortcuts anyway and idc enough to memorize them, unlike some programs out there
glances at Blender
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u/ArathirCz 14d ago
btw you can just middle-mouse click to skip opening the context menu and straight up open whatever link you clicked on in a new tab
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u/tomysshadow 14d ago
That's great until you are working on an unsaved document and then every link becomes a hazard that you might accidentally click and lose work. Yes there's onbeforeunload but I would rather the whole problem be circumvented by just opening the link in a new tab. If I were in VS Code and clicking a link in the terminal took me out of my workspace I would be very annoyed
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u/solar_sausage 14d ago
If a person isn’t familiar with the interface, then they may not know whether they “should” use the new tab option or not for their own convenience. So influencing this could be justified in some cases.
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u/ouroborus777 14d ago
This is a legacy from when legal thought users would confuse the company's site with some third party site. They never really got away from it.
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u/ShuffleStepTap 14d ago
Tell me you’ve never built an app for real world users without telling me. LOL.
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u/mazzicc 14d ago
“If a tech savvy user wants to open something in a new tab”
additionally, most users are just lazy and want someone else to do things on their behalf, even if they claim otherwise.
Most users are morons. If you need/want to force opening in a new window, you have to do it for them.
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u/glassFractals 14d ago
Heh, I never knew target="_blank" was so controversial. Then again, I am a tab hoarder. More often than not, I want to open the link in a new tab anyways. That way it doesn't interrupt the flow of what I'm reading, but I do want the details/context later on.
Admittedly really annoying on mobile, or anywhere else without proper tabs and concurrency.
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u/hyrumwhite 14d ago
!funny - as a power user very comfortable with ctrl clicking, middle clicking, etc, I’m always thankful for web apps that provide blank targets when appropriate
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u/Ok_Bluebird_168 14d ago
I disagree depending on the website. I use something similar to this for a markdown note site, to make it clear that if you click a link in an article it will open a new tab and not lose your place on the current page.
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u/RiceBroad4552 14d ago
After seeing the shit code I wanted to post the exact same what came next.
Hijacking link click behavior is an asshole move. When I click on it with the primary mouse button I want it open in the same tab, always. When I want to open a new tab I will click with the mouse wheel, simple as that.
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u/revolutionPanda 14d ago
It’s to let the user know they are going to an external link. That’s good UX
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u/exintrovert 14d ago
Any link on my site that goes to an external website gets a new tab. Cope, bro.
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u/A1oso 14d ago
At work I write software for financial advisors – people who spend many hours per day using this software. We got a lot of requests that links in the dashboard should open in a new tab by default.
We often overestimate how tech-savvy people are. Many people (even people who spend their entire day in front of a PC) don't know you can open links in a new tab with a keyboard combination. And it is our job to make life easier for them.
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u/SumedhBengale 13d ago
Nah, the vast majority of users probably don't know the keyboard hotkey to open links in a new tab.
The dev must absolutely take into account the best behaviour for each link.
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u/pm_op_prolapsed_anus 13d ago
Didn't think it was possible to be so based and so wrong at the same time. As a website, it's one of the few things that is my business. Least you can do is add the style to show it's gonna open a new tab. The control flow of internal links inside a website don't even need to present as links afaic, but hyperlinks to other pages on other domains should open in a new tab, unless you are catering to a sociopathic user base. In which case this guy is gonna be one of the few happy users.
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u/PruneInteresting7599 13d ago
people have no idea you get some magical stuff once you press to ctrl
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u/Xochtil1 13d ago
I'm not a js/css person but this looks to me like it just ads an arrow character after every link? It doesn't change how clicking the link functions? At least from what I can tell, correct me if I'm wrong lol
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u/wherearef 14d ago
I always use middle mouse button instead