Tuesday, November 22, 2005

target="_blank" is evil

It is the height of arrogance to force someone's browser to open a new window when they click on one of your links. Who are you to go invade someone's personal computer space like that? By using target="_blank" you are stating that you are certain that the person visiting your page loves it so much that he or she could not possibly want to leave it. And what the hell makes you think that your site is that great? Quite often I just go to a page and click on a link and then I'm done with that page. I have no interest in keeping a copy of the original page open.

This is 2005, people! All of us should be using tabbed browsing, which allows us to decide on our own whether we want to keep the original page open when we click on a new link. And even those who haven't yet embraced tabs yet are likely perfectly capable of right clicking or control clicking and selecting "Open Link in New Window" if they decide they want to keep your page open while they view the link they have clicked on. There's simply no need for target="_blank"!