I suggest this option (I think this will be implemented in all future browsers anyway):
3) Open Link in the same Window

This would solve the problem, because:
a) web designers could make any default action (on left-click), which they think best fit the user
b) users could always open link in their preferred way, ignoring the default action (and I think they should be able to see the default action, ex, when onmouseover event is triggered on that URL)

I’m surprised that neither browsers (AFAIK), nor W3C is included such useful option (I mean target=”_blank” shouldn’t be excluded from STRICT validation).

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-diff-20080122/

the argument used is that Target is useful with iframe.

The problem come when the site needs a special window, full screen, or “half” full screen (no menus, but still the cross and the system tray) or small pop-up windows for explaining something while hovering it above the main window. This worked well for windowed only browsers, but tabbed browsers just ruin this model. Especially the site designer don’t know how the page will be displayed (window or tab). So that,in fact, I alway disable tabbed browsing and am happy to use the tabs in the system tray.
And it becomes really haphazardous when Javascript is not implemented properly, such as the window.focus() in Firefox, so that when we click on a link toward an already open window, it don’t get the focus (it don’t go above the others)

There would be much less problems in lefting what is working in Internet, in place of enforcing web designers to modify their sites all the time. I have pages which are 7 years old, and which are already up to 2-3 rewriting. This is plain ridiculous.

Or how about a JavaScript which produces a little pop-up menu offering users the choice of opening the page in a new window or in a new tab?

- You need new window for sites where you need to make it clear that you are not responsible for the content which opens in a new window.
- New window is preferred for offsite links.

I also forgot to mention that javascript hack doesn’t work with sites that check referrer.

You need new window for:

- Flash site (back button doesn’t work anyway)
- Media players (they crash and burn and you lose back button functionality again)
- PDF documents (they have their own back button)
- Showing large images (you can continue reading while they load, especially on slower connections or if you are downloading other things in the background)
- Forums (managing attachments for the posts for example)

There are many other circumstances when you might need a new window, one of them being on the site where you get “warning: page has expired” when you click on the back button (reason: security of transaction), and you can’t go back to the site you were before and thus you lose the link and have to retrace your steps to get there which is sometimes impossible (for example because of updated Google pagerank in the meantime).

Given all this, removing target was a bad idea. Allowing it through the module is a step forward after taking two steps back. Integrating it into XHTML 2.0 would be a much better thing to do.

Sometimes you don’t want to use the back button if you fill out any kind of form at another web site, so the original site may be lost although you really wanted to go back there. It’s much easier to simply close a window so you can get back to the original site. So people who complain that opening a new window “breaks the back button” of the browser need to understand that many times, the back button becomes useless anyway.

I am afraid that many “reforms” of the Internet don’t arise from a real knowledge of user needs and page display needs, but, for whatever reason, of a very restricted view of only a special case.

Yes some attributes like “_blank” or opening pop up or full screen can be misused. But we can misuse cars too, to run into somebody and attempt to kill him, and even with a simple table knife. Must cars or knives be forbidden for this reason? Wake up, the world is much larger than any of our personal scopes…

This page http://www.shedrupling.org/art/lotr/revelfic2.php
features a nice illustration (in the bottom) with a link “click to see in full screen”.

When I designed this page in 2004, it was enough to use a javascript link onclick window open, some more lines of javascript to adjust the image size to the screen, and waow the magical paradise of Valinor popped up in all the screen making forget it was just a computer screen. (to close, just click on the image)

It was THE standard way of coding, it worked with IE, and with Firefox as well. But Firefox made the full screen more difficult… and recently IE frankly suppressed it!

So that, today, I had to redesign this page, to cope with all the quirks an tricks of this full screen mode, according to various browsers and users who disable the javascript, placing warnings and all to guide the user… that makes 380 lines of code, 9 PHP functions, a state machine to manage all…

I though the case of Opera would be the simplest, but they have a useless “fit to width” option which… unfits my screen adaptation, so that I have to warn the user so that he may disable this…

Is all this mess really a progress?? Is really Internet better because of so many useless hassle? If we keep with a Tolkien comparizon, I shall call it the crooked way toward Valinor…

happy you did not take it as personnal.

But I hope concerned people will move…

…passing a message to the authors of the spec seems as difficult as speaking to the author of the ten commandments 3000 years ago on the Sinaï mountain…

Ha ha!
Maybe…