Links should not open in new window revisted

Des Walsh revisits why links should not open in a new window. References earlier posts by Darren Rowse and me that Internet readers are passionately opposed to the practice.

In that I still get folks wanting to have their blog open links in a new window, thought it worth rehasing.

The practice of having links in a new window started with paranoid website owners not wanting people to leave their website when clicking to a new site. Thinking was that the window with your website would always be in the background. Dumb.

First, it’s easier for users to hit the back button on their browse to find your blog or website, something they’ll do if you’re offering readers something of value.

Second, having links open a new window reasults in readers having multiple browser windows open on their screen. From Darren:

…[I]f I want to see a link in a new window (or tab – I’m a big tabbed browser fan) I’ll open it in one (and I do – regularly). I find it incredibly annoying when a new window opens up without me asking for it to. I have enough windows open on my desktop at any one time without needing more!

Des now acknowledges what he was doing was “an old, now discredited approach to web design and likely to annoy the blazes out of a lot of people.