When exactly links should open in a new tab/window? I find that some of the actions which require certain operations in a new tab/window can be done on the same page using modal windows and then refreshing the same page to show the updated contents.
A couple of google searches gave me the following results:
Why external links should open in new tabs?
When if ever should links be opened in a new window?
Is there ever a good reason to force opening a new browser window?
Should links open in new windows?
Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended 15 years ago
Some suggest that in case of external links they should be opened in a new tab/window, some suggest that they should be opened on the same page for simplified user control. Both of them sound correct in their own ways. Isn't there some sort of generalization? Or are there any particular situations where we cannot do without links opening in a new tab/window?
In other words, what are the situations where a link should open in a new tab/window OR in the same page (taking into account that modal windows are implemented frequently these days)?
Having external links opened in a new tab is better and done more often so that when you have a user surfing your site and clicks on an external link he doesn't have to go back but simply just needs to close that tab and can continuous surfing your site.
You have to bare in mind that not ever internet user knows how to work with a browser like you do (Still many lesser-intelligent people on the net).
add attribute target="_blank" on a tag
Link 1</strong></p>
Related
My web application is mimicing the UI of my desktop application, flow is as follows
Select Task in browser window
Change any Options and then start
Show Progress in same browser window, the progress bar goess back to server every 5 seconds checking progress.
When task has completed we show report in new tab
and go back to Select task Window,
this is done by running following Javascript in progress page
window.open('/start','_self'); window.open('/reporturl','_blank');
This works fine on my PC but when trying on Safari on OSX and on Android phone and iPad one of two things happen
The progress page becomes the start page but the report page is not opened in tab
The Progress page becomes the report page
My question is does opening window in new tab with _blank have all the problems of using popup windows. If so should I modify my prcoess so that at stage 3 it just displays report page, and then add a back button or navigable footer to the report to allow user to get back to start page ?
I can think of some options you could use instead of new tab.
Modal with Ajax
-- With jQuery it is posible to open modal
dialogs they can be populated with html (or other data) fetched with ajax (async). I am a big fan of these and use them all over my projects. Users will not be annoyed with pop-up warning messages, etc. Once the content is read (or whatever) the user can simply close the dialog. (If I had to make your app I would certainly implement this).
Besides the jQuery dialogs, other modal/dialog scripts are out there. Check out Bootstrap Modal if you like it modern.
Serve report as download
-- Depending on what the user can/will do with the report, it might be interesting to write the report page in a way that it sends back a .pdf file, or another type of file, as download. Loading the URL in a new tab will now always start a download. Triggering this from JS without user interaction might be a problem though (same as with pop-up / new tab). Adding a button to trigger the download on complete will solve this.
I know the question was about the use of tabs.. But try to avoid it. Browsers handle it all in their own way. And many users get confused when suddenly stuff is opening in tabs when they did not ask for it. In case of pop-ups, it is possible for users to turn them of or convert into opening a new tab from within the browser settings. If they have been fiddling with browser defaults, you'll have troubles of keeping the 'flow' of the app the same for all users (and cross browser).
Is there any way to completely duplicate the state of a current tab in Google Chrome? I want an exact copy of the current state of the page without having to reload the page in another tab.
An example use case:
While browsing a "slideshow" on a news website, I want to preserve the current slide that I'm on, but create a duplicate so that I can continue viewing the next slide. If I simply Right-Click and "Duplicate" the tab, the new page will completely Reload, reprocessing all of the Javascript and running the pre-slideshow advertisement again.
In short "NO" you can't.
I am not expert on this
but a similar behavior can be achieved in some ways i know :
Dump the whole DOM
Never tried this though. You can convert the DOM to a string, pass it to the new window and then parse it as a document. This will let you lose your DOM events and State manipulation javascript. (But that's good for your case)
var dtab = window.open('about:blank', 'duplicate_a_tab');
dtab.document.open();
dtab.document.write("... yout html string ..");
dtab.document.close();
Develop an extension
Let the users continue on the current tab with the current state, your extension should be able to capture the screenshot of that area and open that screenshot in new tab. There are plenty of screenshot taking extensions are available in the market.
If that website is your own
You can develop your services that uses state locally like progressive web apps. Give a link separately to 'duplicate' which will eventually open the same URL in different tab with the same local state and with the flag do-not-sync.
This will not work when the user uses browser inbuilt duplicate
feature.
For example HTML's href tag has a target attribute that can force the page to be opened in a new window. But conceptually is this a good idea? Should the content determine how the user should read it? Or should this be entirely up to the user (right click -> open in new window)?
I disagree. A link shouldn't be forced to open in a new window. If the user wants to open it in a new window then it is up to them.
Normally when we redirect to a link which is of the current site then it should/may open in the same window. But if the link redirects us to another sire then its better to open it in a new window so that the user will stick to our(current) site. There is no specific rule. It is mainly done as per client's requirement.
One drawback of in opening the link using right--> click is it makes the user do one extra click. In case your page has 5 links and the user wants to open them in new windows/tabs each time he/she has to do an extra click. This is just an example. It all depends what the user wants.....
I have a registration system on my website which uses the common activation email trick.
This email simply contains instructions and a link to the activation page on my website.
So suppose I registered on the site, opened a new tab to check my emails and then clicked on the link, which will open in another new tab, resulting in two tabs open on the site (of which one is btw still telling them to o check their mail).
Is there a way to get the link in the email to open in the first tab on my website? (Or open a new tab if the previous one was closed or moved to another domain).
Thanks for any help/suggestions!
You can name your current window/tab with a JavaScript assignment:
<script type="text/javascript">
this.name = "mainWindow";
</script>
Then you use that name as value for the target attribute in links, like
<a href="nextPage.html" target="mainWindow">...
If mainWindow does not yet (or no more) exist, it will open in a new tab.
Update
The above stuff does not solve the OP's problem, because for links opened from emails, the target attribute will usually not be transferred from MUA to browser (except maybe for webmailers, but we cannot rely on this). So I was thinking of some kind of landing page which uses JavaScript to achieve the desired effect:
If target window/tab `mainWindow` has already been opened, focus it, perform activation there, and close ourselves.
If target window/tab does not exist, perform activation right where we are.
If this worked, you would only see a second open tab for a moment (case 1), before it closes itself. Yet it is not possible to "close ourselves", as I learned here and here - so in the end there would be a superfluous tab left, which should have been avoided. Seems like it cannot be done, sorry!
Every solution I've seen so far for opening a new browser window uses the target property in to set it to "_blank". This is frustrating because in some browsers it only opens a new tab AND combine that with the auto-resizing behvaiour at http://www.facebook.com/connect/prompt_feed.php?&message=test, it basically mangles my browser whenever I try updating my status from my site.
How can I be sure to open a new window when a user clicks on a link?
Thanks!
Trindaz on Fedang
Popups are windows, they just have some features disables. You can make a popup act like a regular window by enabling these features. For example, if you open a popup with
window.open('url', 'name', 'width=500, height=500, status=1, toolbar=1, location=1, menubar=1, resizable=1');
the window will have a toolbar, a URL bar, a status bar, menus, and it will be resizable. It will the same as any other window.
Keep in mind, however, that many browsers block window.open() under some conditions, and some of them will open new tabs if you specify a lot of features. Some are weird about it too; Chrome, for example, uses scroll bars on popups by default, but if you specifically tell it to use scroll bars in a popup (using scrollbars=1), it will open in a tab instead.
So basically there is no way to be completely sure that your page will always open in a new window, because browsers all handle this stuff differently, users can change settings too. The code above is probably your best bet if you have to have a new window, but you might want to look into other options.
window.open(URL,name,specs,replace)
function newwindow()
{
myWindow=window.open('','','width=300,height=300');
myWindow.document.write("<p>This should open in a popup</p>");
myWindow.focus();
}
There is a legitimate reason for using Target=_blank that everybody has completely overlooked, and that is when a website is written as a BOOK with chapters/pages and the Table of Contents must remain intact without using the BACK button to reload the previous page (Table of Contents). This way all a surfer needs to do is close the Target Page when finished reading and they will be back to the Table of Contents.
Lucky for us that HTML5 has reinstated the Target="_blank" code, but unfortunately the "Block Popups" must be unchecked for it to work.