On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 9:52 PM, Jeff Howard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I view sites that take it upon themselves to spawn new windows in > about the same vein as sites that automatically resize my window or > move it around. It's too presumptuous.
Hear, hear. Rules can always be broken for a good reason, but start with the default that a link is just a link. I've spent hours watching people be confused, even if only momentarily, when anything else happens. It's not that they can't recover, it's that you've made them think about something that should not require thinking. It's also a much more serious problem for people using some kinds of alternate browsers, who may have much more difficulty navigating back to their site. In the same window, it's a simple, well-known action: BACK (or the equivalent key or voice command). In a new window, they have to switch to concentrating on navigation in order to figure out where the old window is, or what it's called, and how to get back to it. I've never understood why sites are so self-important that they must treat other sites as foreign bodies. If you don't want me to follow a link, why did you put it there? Why are you making people learn your particular convention for "this link does something unexpected"? I've even seen this behavior between different sections of corporate intranets, as though the XXX Department is in a completely different world. I watched while one user opened no less than 12 windows while trying to complete a single, relatively straight-forward task, but one which meant he needed to gather information from several sources. This is not to say that there is never a reason to open a new window, but not for simply linking to a new page. -- Whitney Quesenbery www.wqusability.com Storytelling for User Experience Design www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/storytelling ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
