Re: Finding The New Acceptable Ways

On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Dave Carscadden wrote:

> On all the links pointing away from my site, I was putting a target="_new"
> tag into my code, forcing a new browser window to open, so that I wouldn't
> lose my customers.  After 2 hours searching, I cannot find the new
> acceptable way of doing this on your site.

Well, firstly that is - as a general rule - very bad practice.  If a user
wants to open a new window, let *them* do it.  And don't try to "keep"
them at your site, unless you want to annoy people into never returning.

The acceptable way to do it would be to use a scripting event to open
a new window:
<a href="http://somewhere.else/"
onclick="gotopage('http://somewhere.else/');return false"
>somewhere else
</a>

where gotopage() is your function to open whatever window you want,
bearing in mind my admonition.

> Therefore I would like to suggest, for the thousands of people like myself,
> a search box for deprecated tags which would transport me to the section
> explaining the new acceptable way of writing that code.

That is a nice idea in principle, but not easy in practice.  There
would be a huge amount of work to do, writing all the hints and tips
(which is really what you're asking for), and correlating them to
the error messages.  OTOH, a lesser solution, such as a FAQ with
keyword search, might just be feasible.

-- 
Nick Kew

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