When you create a new hyperlink on your website it’s always good to set the link to open in a new window or tab so that the person visiting your site is not taken away from your page prematurely.
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Here’s some bonus video that I’ve placed on this post just as a test for the ipad. This is placed here using html5 code and appears to be working, playing a video on the page when viewed on an ipad.
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Thanks for the mention on the podcast.If you want some one to interview just shoot me an email or msg me on skype n3bben
Love the show, Benjamin Straw
Opps wrong skype name: N3bb3n
Hi Ray,
I recently discovered your podcast while doing research as I plan my own first podcast. I plowed through your main podcast and now I'm working my way through Quick Tips. Thank you for putting out all of this useful advice for free.
I must say I strongly disagree with this episode's tip, however. I understand the desire to keep visitors on your own site and the advantage setting the target of a link to a new tab or window, but I don't like websites that force browser behavior on users.
From a web design perspective, at least personally, I think it's a bad, user-unfriendly practice. Visitors can choose to open a link on your site in a new tab or window if they want to keep your site open; there are easy ways to do so. But if you force their browser to open the link in a new tab or window, I don't know of any way to override that. You're forcing unexpected (because not all links behave like that) and possibly undesired browser behavior on them.
As a user it aggravates the hell out of me when a website won't let me open a link in the same tab. One reason is that I have a tendency to keep too many tabs open, so I try to impose some discipline on myself by installing an extension in Chrome that prevents me from opening more than X number of tabs. If I'm already at the limit, the extension blocks the newly opening tab and warns me with a popup that I have to click away. But even aside from this, I'm still aggravated when a website forces me to open another tab when I don't want to. If I want to leave your site, I should be able to do so simply by clicking on your outgoing link, not by being forced to a new tab and then having to come back and close the tab for your site. I'm perfectly capable of right-clicking and then selecting "open in new tab" from the context menu or, more usually, middle-clicking with my mouse or touchpad to open the link in a new tab on my own when I want to do that.
I don't know how many people feel the same way about this as I do. This tip could drive away as many visitors as it retains. I don't know. There's no guarantee that it will retain any either. Visitors might just close the tab to your site after the new one loads because they were ready to leave anyway. So I guess without some kind of systematic survey data there's no way to tell for sure whether this tip would help or hurt on balance. I prefer to err on the side of user-friendliness, however, and design a site that behaves as I would want it to behave.
Anyway, keep up the good work! When is the next podcast coming out? Seems like it's been a while since the last one.
Thanks for the feedback. That's definitely something to think about and sorry if my links are causing a problem. I will likely keep this tip in place for now but I'll let others know of the downside of doing so. The next episode should be soon. I'm editing it now;)
Sounds good. For all I know, I could be atypical on this issue, but it's something to consider.
For better or worse this is the first time it's been brought up but it has given me something to think about. I will say there is one more larger, podcasting related reason for doing this. Many people play my podcast from the player on the page while browsing the show notes.
Inevitably people click the links within the notes and then the page is replaced with another, booting them off the player and losing their spot and the time it took to download the episode fully. That generally makes people more upset than a new tab or window and they will often not return to listening which is not good for the podcaster.
This is good feedback though and something to think about more moving forward. Take care.