W3C, target_blank, and sessions

Is the standard a good idea

[twist]

The W3C says that target=_blank should not be used because it breaks the users back button. So it has been depricated in the new standards.

My concern is with all the recent virus attacks and the flood of virus protection software out there trying to out do each other that cookies could take quite a hit.

I have set up p3p on my site but as backup I have set up sessions so that if a user has cookies disabled they still only need to login in once. The login is only for the forums but I pass the session id through my entire website to insure that a user visiting my site won't have to log in multiple times because I know how annoying that can be.

I can't carry sessions to other websites. So unless I open links to other webpages in new windows I lose my session and force the user to login again.

I replaced target=_blank with a short javascript that does the same thing but is xhtml valid. So validation isn't my issue.

Which of these two do you think the visitors would find less annoying?

1) Break my sessions by opening the external links in the same window.

or

2) Break the back button by opening pages in new windows.

[mipapage]

I may be wrong here, but if the user browses away from your site and then back, doesn't the session remain alive for a certain period of time or until you kill the session (ie logout)?

[ronin]

Which of these two do you think the visitors would find less annoying?

I think the reason why this is such a tricky question is because each individual develops his or her own personal browsing habits. Different people find different things annoying.

Personally, I get frustrated when an offsite page opens up in the same window forcing me to go back to the page I was just on and pressing CTRL+N so that I can keep each site in a separate browsing window. Other people, I'm sure, get annoyed when new browser windows keep opening when they want to see all pages in a single browser window.

I think link behaviour (new window ¦ same window) should be controlled by stylesheets. Then, if necessary, the user's stylesheet could override the author's stylesheet.

But that's just me...

[Purple Martin]

I think link behaviour (new window ¦ same window) should be controlled by stylesheets. Then, if necessary, the user's stylesheet could override the author's stylesheet.

That's the best solution to this problem I've heard yet! I hope somone from the W3C is reading this :-)

Personally I like external links to be target="_blank", but I realise that some other people prefer it the other way.

[vkaryl]

I think link behaviour (new window ¦ same window) should be controlled by stylesheets. Then, if necessary, the user's stylesheet could override the author's stylesheet.

Wow. Perfect. Simple in theoretical parlance. But then again, how many "normal" users will HAVE a stylesheet preference set?

I mean, won't the browser just load whatever default it has and the "normal" non-geek will still have the same problem? Or what am I (as usual!) missing?

[twist]

I may be wrong here, but if the user browses away from your site and then back, doesn't the session remain alive for a certain period of time or until you kill the session (ie logout)?

I don't know about other languages but in php the session is either kept alive by a cookie or passing the session id from page to page. This hypothetical situation is refering to visitors who would have cookies disabled.

[mipapage]

Ahh right, thanks twist. I forgot you mentioned that.

[grahamstewart]

If you are using a session ID that is passed between pages by the URL (e.g.

www.example.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=497545200547

) then I'm pretty sure it should be possible to browse away from the site and back again without interrupting the session. This certainly seeems to hold true for the sites that I use personally.

The disadvantage of this approach is that if someone bookmarks a page then it will contain a session ID, so you have to be careful to protect from accidental (or deliberate) session highjacking (i.e. store the users IP address as a session variable and compare on each page).

We're straying into the PHP Forums territory so I'll leave that there.

Personally I dislike websites that force me to open pages in a different window. I like to make that choice myself especially since my browser, Opera, offers five different choices of how I'd like to open a page and provides simple shortcuts to choose.

[ergophobe]

Personally, I get frustrated when an offsite page opens up in the same window forcing me to go back to the page I was just on and pressing CTRL+N so that I can keep each site in a separate browsing window.

Just for the record - this is the exact opposite of my preference. I use Firefox, so I just CTRL-click and pretty much always open a new tab for each page unless I'm sure I want to leave the page I'm on. When people go creating new windows on me, I get perturbed. I'm glad to see target _blank deprecated, even though I used to use it a fair bit before I realized how much that behavior bothered me in my own surfing.

Tom

[vkaryl]

I'm with "the other guy" - I want every new page in a new window no matter how that's accomplished. I don't EVER want the original page lost under new loads. Generally when I surf away from the original page, it's with the intent and sometimes the necessity to return to that page - and it's extremely frustrating to me to have to hope the original page is still showing SOMEWHERE in the View/Go To section, or even sometimes have to open the Explorer History bar to figure out where I was. I do a lot of research on the web for various reasons and it's easy to go somewhere you think you need to be only to find out you were wrong then be unable to get "back" - new windows obviate that problem entirely....

[thehittmann]

hmmm I always use target="_blank" for my offsite links aswell. I don't mind changing the way I do things but it would be my preferance to continue being able to do things this way. How can something thats used so much be deprecated and deemed not important, weird.

[twist]

should be possible to browse away from the site and back again without interrupting the session. This certainly seeems to hold true for the sites that I use personally.

Your right, if the person simply uses the back button the session will remain in the address bar. I think I was looking at it from a different perspective. Thanks for pointing that out.

More concerns I've been having,

My website keeps links to local websites in my area, ranging from schools to local business. I have around 800 or so links. My problem is that many of these websites change their addresses, are down quite a lot or just disappear without any warning. I scan them as much as possible for dead links but I can't catch them all. Many of these websites are pretty piss poor and have terrible coding.

Here is where not opening up these links in external windows causes problems,

1) I can't stop other websites from breaking the back button. Where the user clicks and it keeps them on the page. I think everybody here knows what I'm talking about. Most users don't know how to escape these sights and just end up closing the browser window. In the process losing my sight.

2) Another problem is websites with poor navigation. Where the user goes to their website and it takes them 30 links to find what they were looking for. A lot of people still only use the back button to get back to where they were. A user may click it 10 or 20 times and just give up and close the page.

3) Webpages that have popups. A person could visit a link from my site and start getting popups on all the sites pages. So the user might start hitting the back button and be flooded with more popups causing him to just give up and close the window to avoid them.

I know these aren't issues that people that come to webmasterworld have to deal with. Most likely all of us know are way around a browser and have some type of popup blocker already setup. I also wouldn't have these problems if I only linked to reputable sites with good code but that isn't a option either.

Thanks for the opinions so far, would like to read some more.

[grahamstewart]

I think its another w3 recommendation thats about giving choice back to the user. As a user I want to be able to control what windows are open on my machine, so why should a web page be able to decide that it is just too important to surf away from and force new windows on me?

Plus you need to bear in mind that not all internet devices allow multiple windows (for instance some web kiosks, PDAs, TV browsers etc may have limited/no windowing ability). By deprecating the tag they are discouraging its use and therefore making the web more accessible.
(Plus, as mentioned, it breaks the back button).

Incidentally those who are complaining that its a pain having to select a link to open in a new window should consider that this is really a fault of their browser, not the W3c.

In Opera (and Mozilla/Firebird as well now I believe) you can simply Shift-Click to open in a new tab or Control-Shift-Click to open in a new background tab or use the middle mouse button. Lovely :)

[thehittmann]

Just seems to me like this is a step backwards to me. You'd think that technology would be aiming to advance not continue to cater for older materials.

[ronin]

I think its another w3 recommendation thats about giving choice back to the user. As a user I want to be able to control what windows are open on my machine

I absolutely agree with you. And the user should have the choice. (I also want to control what windows are open and I want a new window to open if a webpage links to a different site rather than another page on the same site.)

Already in this thread there are about equal numbers on both sides of the fence, which demonstrates that the OP's original question over whether new windows are irritating or not is extremely difficult to answer.

To my knowledge - and I may well be wrong about this - someone please correct me if I am - there isn't a browser option in either Opera, FireFox, or IE which says:

Open links in a new window / new tab:

a) Always
b) According to markup
c) Only when it's a different site
d) Never

And this should be an option in all browsers.
Then, if the option is left to markup, then the link behaviour can be defined by CSS.

[grahamstewart]

Thats not a bad idea - but there would be a lot of issues defining what counts as a site. Is

gromits.example.com

a different site to

widgets.example.com

? Is

example-isp.com/~dave/

a different site from

example-isp.com/~bob/

?

Also defining the link behaviour in CSS doesn't solve the problem - the back button will still be broken - you've just moved the problem elsewhere.

[diades]

Hi there

Whilst target has been deprecated it is still a part of the dom and can be accessed quite "legally" via:
<a href="foo.htm" onclick="this.target='_blank'">Foo</a>

[ergophobe]

What happens with target="_blank"

- If you are using a screen reader?
- A cell phone browser?

Tom

[diades]

I didn't say that it would not cause problems in some areas, just that it was still a part of the DOM and, therefore, legal to use it:).