I think you've hit a key point there - it's about user preference. We can't assume that people will use the same thing as we do, nor can we even assume that "everyone" does something or design just for the majority.
And it works both ways. If we keep using _blank new users will never discover tabs or get interested in other ways of surfing. On the one hand we want to innovate and on the other every time the talk is about getting rid of technologies that assume things on the user's machine (different windows, frames, JavaScript) the argument to keep obtrusive technologies is because all people use them anyways. Yes, there are die-hard users out there that won't change as they feel secure in having understood one paradigm in the past, but that does not mean we cannot go with the times, especially if the change does mean we give the user the option to either keep things as they are or choose on their own what to do. Every time we use a CSS2 effect we could argue that there are netscape 4.x users out there. But that won't get us anywhere. Millions of people watch big brother, I for one am happy to have another choice. ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
