At 11:00 AM 8/25/2005, Janelle Clemens wrote:
Who says opening a new window is bad practice. Especially if it is an
outside link. I've been searching the web for information on this and
finding nothing. My understanding of web accessibility and 508 is to make
everything as clear a possible. If there is a guideline out there that
states "Thou shall not open new window" please post the link.
Janelle,
As I understand it, when a new window opens a user depending on a screen
reader can easily get confused. The new window will take the place of the
old one but won't have a history for the Back button. How can the user get
back where they came from? Should they close the current window, close the
current tab (in a tabbed browser such as Firefox or Opera), or toggle tabs
or windows to return to their previous page? If they've got multiple
applications open, it could be time-consuming and frustrating to find one's
way back.
Presumably if we include sufficient warnings within the link itself then
folks will know ahead of time that a new window will open and will know how
to deal with it. But I don't know if this answers all of the concerns.
Regards,
Paul
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