- From: Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@myrealbox.com>
- Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 21:34:37 +1200
On Apr 28, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Bill Mason wrote: > ... > I can tell you my experience at the company I'm currently working for, > as to why they mandate using "_blank" in some circumstances. > (Disclaimer: I don't endorse the policy, I just have to live with it.) > ... > 1) Fear that the user will follow some link away from our pages, and > never return to complete the form. (I think this comes from sales > and/or marketing personnel.) A common solution to that is to minimize links on the form, even to the point of removing most global navigation. Sometimes form-specific links are necessary (e.g. "By submitting this form you agree to our __terms of service__ and __privacy policy__"), but links like those should use named targets rather than _blank (because if someone opens one of those links twice it's a mistake, they don't actually want two copies open). > 2) Complaints from users who would follow the surrounding links > elsewhere and then lose their way back to the application form. (This > would primarily occur when they started the application form -- which > is typically multiple pages -- and go off following some other link to > find some piece of information about the application process, finally > losing their way to how they got into the form in the first place.) > > In both cases, I have no idea why the back button isn't enough for > everyone involved, or how people got lost in spite of having a back > button. > ... Because the Back button is a horribly awkward interface for navigating, especially for getting back to pages you visited a few minutes ago. (In some browsers the Back button has a visible associated menu, but it's hard to open -- and it relies on page <title>s, which readers probably didn't notice when first scanning those pages, again because of poor browser design.) Cheers -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/
Received on Saturday, 28 April 2007 02:34:37 UTC