Re: Problem with 'target-new' property and alternative suggestion

I think you are forgetting one of the key aspects of CSS, that each user 
can easily add a "User Style Sheet" to take care of any rule(s) he/she 
does not want as they are defaulted on [x] website, and with Mozilla you 
can specify it on a per-site basis (without needing the site author to 
add an ID or a class for their site)

* { target-new: something !important; }

;-)

~Justin Wood

Bill Talcott wrote:

> Regarding 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-css3-hyperlinks-20040224/#the-target-new ...
>
> I completely agree with Sam Kearns in 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2004Mar/0007.html.  J. 
> King makes some good points in 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2004Feb/0513.html also.
>
> While it's open to interpretation whether a new window is better 
> design-wise, Sam's other points are valid regardless. The target-new 
> attribute makes some decisions that only the user should decide. The 
> current target attribute is most often used for popups and opening 
> links to other sites in new windows. Many people do not want new 
> windows, so much so that several "single window" extensions have been 
> written for Firefox (even with its relatively small userbase) to 
> intercept these new window requests. Personally, I use Firefox but do 
> not use tabs at all. Am I going to have to wait for the devs to code 
> in an option to completely disable Firefox's tab system, or get an 
> extension (similar to the existing single window extensions) that 
> intercepts new-tab calls?
>
> As J. King said, "tabs" may be too specific also. There may very well 
> be browsers released that don't use tabs, or users like myself who 
> simply don't like them. My OS manages multiple application windows 
> well, so an additional tab bar in the browser simply takes up screen 
> space while giving me no additional benefit. As Boris said in his 
> reply, this seems to cater to one (or a few) browsers.
>
> So, my alternative. I saw the technique elsewhere, and have started 
> doing it on my pages. I use rel="external" in external hyperlinks. 
> This supplies information about the link, stating that it's external. 
> The browser could then handle "external" links in whatever way the 
> user specifies - same window, new tab, new window, etc. A clever 
> browser could even be configured to handle an external link in the 
> same domain differently (in a new tab, instead of a new window, for 
> example). Using rel="external" seems to do basically the same thing as 
> target-new, but I feel that it provides a way to specify a property 
> which can be handled in one of several ways. A browser could probably 
> just as easily be coded to intercept target-new and handle it in the 
> desired way, but that just seems more like making the standard less 
> diverse and hacking browsers to make up for it.
>
> While we all tend to think highly of our own ideas, I think the 
> concept of labelling the type of link and letting the user agent 
> decide how to handle it is much more in tune with an open standard. I 
> don't want standards catering to one specific product, even if that 
> product is considered the best and completely open in every way, 
> shape, and form.

Received on Monday, 13 September 2004 15:12:40 UTC