This post began sometime last week: I was in a meeting and the subject of links opening in new windows came up. Somebody was noting how it had caused a user problems on a certain site. Internally, I flew into a rage. IT'S TWO-THOUSAND-@#$%ing-NINE, more than two millennia since Jesus first came to earth to tell people not to use target="_blank" on their links, and we're still dealing with this crap?
Like any mature adult, I dealt with this by throwing together a bookmarklet to express my rage and righteous damnation of all links that open in a new window. You, too, may use the fruits of that indignation by dragging the Link Witch Hunt to your bookmarks toolbar. Use it to conduct a witch hunt on any page you're viewing to scour it for offensive links. If the site passes, it gets a benevolent green congratulatory message. If it does not, however, the severity of its offense will be judged and all links angrily flagged for the world to see.
With this tool in one hand and a torch burning in the other, I went in search of particularly offensive sites. Our own PBS.org was quickly burned, Facebook's sins were even more flagrant, and--naturally--the sites of a few of my web gurus were revealed to be utterly pristine.
I must admit I shed a few tears when I had to tie Twitter to the stake, too.
Over the weekend, all of this burning and damnation caused me to reflect on a few things. Did I really have the right attitude about links that opened in a new window? Were they as bad as I felt they were? Were they equally bad in all instances?
So I hunted down some of the original gospel on the subject from Jakob Neilsen :
Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer's carpet. Don't pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly since current operating systems have miserable window management). If I want a new window, I will open it myself!
And:
The Back button is the lifeline of the Web user and the second-most used navigation feature (after following hypertext links). Users happily know that they can try anything on the Web and always be saved by a click or two on Back to return them to familiar territory.
I've made the argument many times in my years on the job: the back button is the most important usability feature on the web, and any interference with it is a bad idea. Opening new windows is confusing when it is not expected or understood and offensive when it is not desired. Websites need to be in the business of making their content good enough for visitors to value, not engaging in ridiculous corralling of their users by trying to block off the exits.
If I were to try to articulate the most common reason for having links open in new windows, it would go something like this: our site is the base, you see. Things we link to are meant to be temporary resources or avenues of exploration: we want the visitor to return to our site when she is done.
There's something tremendously antidemocratic about this, and there's a kind of anti-fascistic fervor in the sentiments of people like me who hate this behavior. We want to judge for ourselves what the base of our operations is: what's a temporary exploration and what we want to return to repeatedly. If your site can convince me of that, great; if it can't, I'm not going to look kindly on your attempts to tyrannize my behavior.
But--people tell me--sometimes I WANT things to open in a new window. It lets me check something out without losing where I am!
The classic answer to this is that the user can always do this: use cmd+click or ctrl+click or even right-click + open in a new tab/window. It's easy to do and allows users to determine how they want to browse.
I don't think the problem is so easily dismissed, though. There's an inconvenient fact still lurking: when a site is correct about how you want to use it, it is easier--and therefore of value to you--to have things open in a new window on their own than to require a different kind of link activation.
There's nothing terribly difficult about hitting cmd+click for me: I've got two able arms with able fingers attached to the hands that join them, but Twitter's completely right that I always want its links to open in new windows and that I appreciate not having to think about it. Twitter's my base, man: I want to have my place saved while your picture of your adorable bull-dog loads in another window.
Sure: many users may not understand this behavior (some users will not notice that a new window has opened), but Twitter's success, it seems to me, is based off of making the basic use of its service immensely easy and simple for the majority of its users. The convenience of knowing the best way to use it may well outweigh the cost of alienating a certain percentage of potential users.
And I'm not even like the substantial number of web users I've encountered who understand how new window behavior works and frequently value it, but have no idea that they could trigger this behavior themselves through their keyboard or right mouse button. That knowledge seems to be confined to the more advanced, but not the ability to manipulate multiple tabs and handle different windows.
So, let's take this further: what if PBS is right that a lot of its users view it as significant enough that they WANT that link to NPR to open in another window? That they appreciate being able to come to PBS when they're done?
I dunno, man. I find that really hard to buy. But I'd like to know: what's your experience? Are you tired of web folks screaming about a potentially useful feature? Or are you tempted to say that this disruption of standard link behavior is even worse than I'm making it out to be?
Of course, I had to deal with this issue this week, and I heard the same "but we don't want people to leave our site" response. I even tried my best and sent them the link to the Neilsen article, but they still insisted.
I do appreciate the thought that sites like Twitter and Gmail put into their user experience by opening external links in new windows. In these situations it does make sense, but generally, it never makes sense to open a new window.
Long live the back button!
I recently have been thinking about this issue. Your second highlighted bit really gets to the core of the issue. There are sites that use this feature correctly.
However, I cannot think of a problem that would arise if I could, once and for all, make a browser ALWAYS open a tab instead of a new window. I have tried and failed to reduce browsing to a single window (using Safari and Firefox).
(The other, and even more annoying feature is resizing and removing bars from a browser window. While I have found sites that do this in a way or at a time that doesn't annoy me, I've never found one that I can say, "Yes, I am actively glad they were able to do that.")
I really think this has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Most times, I'm right with you -- avoid the _blank crutch and let your content speak for itself. But there are always exceptions.
Another reason it makes sense for Twitter to have links open in a new window is because, in its case, the Back button isn't good enough. By that I mean that if you've been procrastinating for the last 45 minutes catching up on Twitter, scrolling and clicking "View More" over and over, and you're just about to get back to work but decide to click on that adorable puppy photo, you're going to be very sad when you click "Back" and find yourself back at the top of the screen.
I think it's one of the many things that make us say, "Never do x unless you have to do x." (Great blog, by the way.)
Trevor:
I think the biggest reason I react against opening links in a new window is probably similar to your reason: the thing we encountered most often was people trying to force an inflated sense of their own site's importance on users.
Your post external links is a useful reference, by the way, for anyone else that might be forced to do this even if they don't want to. It details a handy way to use javascript to open all links in a new window, and in the comments there's some even more helpful code on how to check URLs and only open links that point to an external domain in a new window.
We do a similar thing on PBS KIDS to test links and provide a warning bridge to let people know they're leaving the site if the URL is outward-pointing. (For us, this is important, since PBS KIDS is supposed to be a kid-safe zone.)
Dwight:
I love what a zealot you are on subjects like these. I definitely agree with you on this one, particularly on the subject of resizing or moving a browser window. I recently coded some stuff for our Carnival of Danger website, and wanted to cram it full of cursed javascript. I actually spent a while Googling things like "annoying javascript tricks" and "obnoxious javascript". One of my favorite finds, a way of shaking the browser window around as if it were in an Earthquake, didn't work on either Safari or Chrome--they just didn't allow the window to be manipulated that way anymore. Though it thwarted that particular bit of trickery, I was proud to see them taking such a reasonable stand on the issue.
Seems to me like browsers are doing a progressively better job of keeping the browser window--and a user's vital controls over his or her experience--safe from the whims of developers.
Jason:
You make an extremely good point. I love Twitter's dynamic way of loading older posts--hated the old pagination--but that definitely breaks the idea of going away and then coming back. As soon as I read your comment, I began thinking about ways around it: they could add a #permalink to the Tweet whose link you've clicked through SWFAddress or something like that, then direct you to the outbound link so that when you came back, it could bring you back to the Tweet in question...
BUT, geez, how complicated is that? New windows/tabs are a vastly simpler solution, and hardly require any thought or technology at all.
Thanks for the comment on the blog, by the way; hope you come by again!
I'm glad that you were thwarted :D
Mostly Off Topic:
It is interesting to me that I like tabbed browsing because I read somewhere that if I wanted to toe the Apple HIG line, I'd prefer multiple windows.
I can't remember my first tabbed browser. I'm guessing it was Mozilla or iCab, or OmniWeb, but back then, in the thick of the browser wars I browsed much more linearly due to the bandwidth restrictions of my 56K modem.
Because the classic mac OS didn't have a task bar equivalent, I generally handled multiple windows using the window shade extension (allowed you to double click on the title bar to have the window "roll up" into itself, leaving a floating title bar). Upon switching to OSX, window shade was wrestled away from me (double clicking minimizes the window into the Dock), but shortly thereafter I got Tabbed browsing. I slowly added more and more browser windows to my browsing m.o. and tabs worked.
They still work today, although I could probably use Exposé with multiple windows in place of tabs just to shake things up... I just don't see that as a step forward.
Sorry about the punctuation in that post. I would edit it if I could.
Dwight:
Oh, man, I remember the window shade thing. It's been a while: the only time I used a Mac before about 2007 was when I was an eighth grader and spent about a month creating a graphical click adventure using Hypercard.
Essentially, though, all my knowledge of Mac UI is post-OSX.
I actually found window-juggling one of the most frustrating aspects of switching from Windows XP to OSX. In XP, I just kept everything maximized, all the time, and used Alt+Tab to switch between applications. This was great: didn't have to resize things all the time, didn't have visual clutter. It was pretty similar to having a single browser with a good tab system: the greater environment is calm, consistent, and unchanging. Having all the variability of new windows--with different sizes, location, etc--is almost always added noise for me, making using the computer just a bit more unpleasant.
I don't Tweet so I can't speak to the Twitter user experience and whether them using _blank is good or bad. However, I cannot stand sites that open windows in a blank window. Maybe, since the advent of tabbed browsing, if the function _tab was available, I wouldn't mind that so much. When I'm surfin' the intertubes, I like to keep all my browsing contained in one window. That's why I also cmd+click a link when I'm surfing. No new windows for me. I have to say one of the reasons I like tabs instead of windows is this: if my browser crashes (I use FF), when I reopen the browser, all of my tabs have been saved and I don't "lose my place." I really like that.
Anyhoo, at the end of the day, my opinion is only mine and if a client wants a link to open in a new window, I'll inform and educate that it's not best practice but will put _blank there if need be. I can only share so much of my knowledge, it's ultimately up to the client to make the final decision... whether I agree with it or not.
Jen, I agree with you about the virtues of having all of your tabs saved. I use Firefox sort of like a desk: I've got tabs hanging around that are reminders of something I want to read, or something that I need to do, or a place I want to explore a bit more when I have the time. They're orderly and occupy very little space until I want to return my attention to them. Windows, on the other hand, are cumbersome and tend to get in the way of other tasks if not dealt with.
As to doing what clients want, I agree that there's no getting away from that final reality. But... I think it's good to push back on that a little bit. Most of us in this profession don't do it just for the money: we really enjoy the pleasure of making beautiful things for people to use, and I think it's fair to stick up for doing things beautifully. As designers and developers, we're not just tools for clients to use to make websites... we're human beings choosing to partner with a client to help make something.
I don't think we should try to die on every hill, but I don't think we should be over-eager to just be tools in the process of creation, either.
Am glad you brought out the tabs differentiation. I dont mind, infact like that my links from twitter/fb/any aggregation site spawning a new tab. Since FF opens a "new tab" when called for a "new window" one would be ok with going against the Nielson!
Maybe. My concern is that new tab vs. same tab isn't a two-way street. If it's a regular link, the user has a choice. Click: same tab, Cmd/Ctrl+click: new tab. If it's a target="_blank" link, on the other hand, the user has only one choice: there's no menu choice or keyboard shortcut for forcing something to open in the SAME tab.
And for me, those are the instances where I get pissed off: I just want to browse and there's no way to circumvent the new tab behavior. Instead, I notice that I'm in a new tab, have to go up and close the previous tab, and effectively spend 1 - 2 seconds developing angry feelings for the site in question.
Ok this is the rule I follow:
If I am going deep within a site then same tab, even if its different properties within the same site as its all relevant to each other.
For eg: pbs.org to pbs.org/video to pbs.org/frontline etc
But if I am going from Facebook to CNN and to few different articles then I need a new tab so I can go back to FB without hitting multiple Back buttons but just by clicking one X button.
I definitely agree with you about the case of Facebook. You're right that there's something about an aggregation site/app -- which is a way of describing both Facebook and Twitter -- that really fits with the use of new windows/tabs.
(And, to be fair to your argument, the article I quoted from Nielsen was from 1999, and he specifically cites the terrible windows management of the time. I think browser tab systems were a substantial advance on that problem.)
But what about everything that's NOT an aggregation app? Many sites, for instance, have links to other "family" sites in the footer open in new tabs. I think that's done because site owners just feel their content is just too important for users to leave entirely. To me, this seems like a case where it's pretty clear, though, that site owners shouldn't be making that decision for the user.
Any thoughts on situations like these?
This is a function of your browser. Practically all tab-enabled browsers have an option to have new windows open in a tab, which includes "_blank" links.
As to the topic at hand, I'm actually fond of the "_blank" option when I link to exterior sites, not because of the stupid "We want people to come back to our site." (I agree that your content should bring people the site, not clever tricks) but because it implies a break in ownership. It says to the user, in a subtle way "This is not the same stuff you've been looking at. This is different stuff. Someone else's stuff."
Also, in addition to the points you mention about keyboard commands, it's worth noting that we reading this blog are not the average user. The the overwhelming majority of users don't even consider keyboard commands as an option, and (as mentioned) most users will consider "_blank" a good thing when that's what they want.
This is preposterous in any context. As a designer, making decisions for the user is THE VERY DEFINITION of your job.
I have a lingering concern that there's a dramatic imbalance of value here: many site owners are very concerned about communicating this "break in ownership". (Which, I think, is an insightful thing to point out, and is broader than what I wrote about.) To users, however, I suspect that the value of this message is of vanishingly small importance.
When I'm browsing your site, to you it may be very important to you that it is YOUR SITE, but for me, I'm usually looking for information, or entertainment, or distraction. I'm generally engaged in a task where it's not very important at all to me whether I'm on your site or somebody else's.
The great miracle of hypertext is the way that it democratizes information: I'm not browsing the Encarta CD until I feel like accessing non-encyclopedic information on a different CD, at which point I'll pop in a different disc. I'm following threads wherever they take me. People asserting the importance of what is THEIRS and NOT THEIRS seems to me to get fundamentally in the way of this, rubbing against, I would argue, the best nature of the web.
I think this is becoming more and more clear, and I appreciate your reiteration of it. "...most users will consider "_blank" a good thing when that's what they want" (italics mine). This makes forming an accurate assessment of what users actually want all the more important, and it remains my biggest concern that the primary force behind target="_blank" is the desires of the site owners.
I think this is true and not true.
On the one hand, you're absolutely right: design consists in presenting the right things to a user, which involves making all sorts of decisions for him/her in advance.
On the other hand, we're talking about interactive designers: we're not making posters, but web sites. These sites are environments for users to navigate and use, constructing their own experience from our framework by making their own choices. The best web design provides frameworks that leave only the most useful decisions to the users, decisions that enhance the value of our content.
And one of the best things about the web is that the browser has created a kind of canon of user control, an inviolate core of decision-making tools that let users interact easily and meaningfully with a vast array of content. The URL bar, the back button, bookmarks, contextual menus (right-click menus)... when designers try to make THESE decisions for users, there are large and usually negative consequences.
So I think that, while your statement gets at something that's really important, it falls short of describing the real task of design, which must manage a subtler balance between who makes what decisions and when.