Blackmoor Vituperative

While discussing blogs this afternoon with a colleague, we had a brief discussion on the topic of forcing a hyperlink to open in a new browser window (typically with the target=”_blank” tag). I took the position that most professional web developers take: it’s nearly always a bad idea to wrest control away from the user. My colleague took the position that most people in advertising take: the less control the user has, the better.

The passage below is by Jakob Nielsen, widely acknowledged as the world’s leading expert on user-friendly web design, from his list of the ten very worst web design mistakes of all time. I am not quoting him because I think his opinion is infallible (there are one or two areas where Nielsen and I differ, if only in the details). I am quoting him because experience has taught me that he is very good at explaining why a web design mistake is, in fact, a mistake.

Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer’s carpet. Don’t pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly since current operating systems have miserable window management).

Designers open new browser windows on the theory that it keeps users on their site. But even disregarding the user-hostile message implied in taking over the user’s machine, the strategy is self-defeating since it disables the Back button which is the normal way users return to previous sites. Users often don’t notice that a new window has opened, especially if they are using a small monitor where the windows are maximized to fill up the screen. So a user who tries to return to the origin will be confused by a grayed out Back button.

Links that don’t behave as expected undermine users’ understanding of their own system. A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows. When they want the destination to appear in a new page, they can use their browser’s “open in new window” command — assuming, of course, that the link is not a piece of code that interferes with the browser’s standard behavior.

With respect to blogs, specifically, I think it is worth pointing out that the best blogs — and, more importantly for my colleague’s purposes, the blogs that get linked to the most — almost never force users to open new windows when they click a link. Visit Technorati.com and check out the top 100 blogs. Go through them all and see how many force users to open links in new windows. I guarantee you that the top 10 English speaking blogs do not.