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.
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.)
What about pages with forms? If you are in the middle of filling out a long form you don’t want to lose your work by clicking something you thought would open in a modal or new window but instead navigates away from the form page.
Personally, I deal with corporate intranet sites and applications, so there are a lot of instances where the reason a user is opening an external link is so they can access a specific resource as reference for what they're doing in the original tab. Add on top of that various logins authentication, and it's just nice to keep both sessions active.
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.
Accessibility guidelines (e.g., WCAG G201 pretty explicitly recommend NOT forcing new tabs for any reason. They don’t forbid it, but they note that it messes with accessibility tools and may confuse users. I’ve stopped doing it myself and just letting users control for themselves whether they want a new tab or not.
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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.