Ego

[erikred]

So, after a little exchange with the ever-provocative mkb_cbr, I've decided to experiment by purposefully not making links in my journal open new windows. What do you think?

Comments

[bookishfellow.livejournal.com]

It's a subtle distinction, but I do not have all my links open in a new window. I have them all open in the same separate window; that's why I tag my links as target="pop" instead of target="_new". All my links go to that one window called "pop".

It would really only matter if I posted and linked a lot more than I actually do, but if I did, I would not be cluttering up your desktop with a million windows. Only one extra one.

[mkb-cbr.livejournal.com]

Opening to the same new window is a definite improvement over multiple new windows.

Kudos to Mister Erikred for his transition. I hope that it proves happy and fruitful.

(Truth be told, I was tempted to switch and complain about the lack of new windows, but figured I'd get my ass kicked.)

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Why the hell would you WANT to make them open new windows? That's just fucked up design.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

A-fucking-men. I wish i knew how this got started. If you want to open a link in a new window, you've had the option to so do for years via right-click. Now i have a Firefox extension that allows me to override links that open in new windows, and i USE IT. OFTEN.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time, quite a lot of the web was populated with nasty little javascript url obfuscators that would automagically refer you from one page to another so that when you hit the back button, thinking you were going back to the page that had originally referred to, you actually ended up back at the javascript referral page, which then reloaded the page you were just on.

erikred -> javascript-laden page -> actual page

If you didn't know how to use the list function on your back button, you were in danger of never getting back. Sure, many people would not have this problem. Unfortunately, lots of people do.

In doing research to reply to this thread, I deliberately looked for pages that would do the auto-referral thing; either I'm too tired or the web has cleaned up its act, because I didn't find anything. So my original reason for using new windows now seems to be mooted. Fair enough.