Re: Why authors are using Transitional (and target="_blank")

Thomas Broyer writes:

> On Feb 19, 2008 2:30 AM, Sam Kuper wrote:
> 
> > Here's another case for using target="_blank". Gmail, by default,
> > sets the target for all external links to "_blank". This allows
> > Gmail to work much more like an email client application (which you
> > expect to stay open after you've clicked a link in an email) than
> > just one of many web pages you may happen to have open (which may or
> > may not stay in place when you click a link in them). It also means
> > that Gmail doesn't risk overwriting the contents of other open
> > browser tabs/windows, which would be puzzling for the user and
> > could, if such tabs/windows contained edited but unsubmitted forms,
> > lead to data loss.**
> 
> Gmail could use
> target="mid:4126b3450802181730h71e9ac64hfb13f1e7517ea6ec@mail.gmail.com"

They could.  But what's the advantage of forcing authors to come up with
something like the above in order to be compliant (and risk that authors
mess up their 'uniqueness' algorithm), rather than letting them have a
concise way of expressing this, making use of a feature which browsers
have already implemented anyway (and will continue to implement, to work
with existing web content)?

> or any other globally unique ID (e.g.
> target="gmail_<internal_mail_id>" where <internal_mail_id> is the ID
> used in Gmail database to identify the mail message).

Except that a mail may link to multiple websites, and you'd probably
want them each opening in separate tabs, not overwriting each other.

The advantage of a named window (target="help" or whatever) is that it
can be re-used (such as for updating the help content for the current
page, rather than spawning yet another window).  If you just want to
open a new window and have no desire ever to use it for anything else
then target="_blank" seems the best way of expressing that.

Smylers

Received on Tuesday, 19 February 2008 09:30:38 UTC