I’ve been tinkering around with things on my new Wordpress install, and one of the tweaks I just rolled out was changing the default behavior of the “link” button in my post editor to add ‘target=”new”‘ to the end of URLs I’m linking to. Simple enough tweak (look for quicktags.js in your wp-includes/js directory, kids), but the lack of this as a configuration option hints at the disdain for “target=new” among the Lords of the Internet.
If you don’t know, “target=new” in a link makes that link open in a new browser window, rather than in the window you’re currently looking at. And for many minds absorbed with Internet propriety, that’s just wrong. It’s not quite on the level of “breaking the Internet” (I cherish my freedom …), but it’s widely viewed as “bad user experience”.
But I challenge that notion when it comes to pages referenced in content. Navigational links; links to original sources at the end of an article, blogrolls, etc. – sure, the good user experience is sending folks along and away from your site. It’s been perceived that “bad actors” use “target=new” or “target=_blank” to keep their site alive in your browser even after you’re done with it. And that’s probably the case a lot of times.
Within the context of an article, however, that logic often falls apart. I’ll reference this Wired blog post about Google & ComScore as an example if you’d like to follow along.
Wired links to five outside sources in this rather short article, with each link providing some background or context to the topic at hand. It’s good context and just linking over to previous Wired pieces or outside data or opinion provides quick and easy reference without having to dump a lot of background information, quotes, etc. into the article.
Presumably, the reader has come to the article to read the article. Reference links invite the reader to leave the article and visit the linked content. Having links open in the same window requires the reader to use the “back button” functionality to return to the article they were reading. Using the “target=new” attribute requires the reader to switch back to the original tab or window to return to the article. Neither is an ideal experience, but I would argue that keeping the original page open is a preferable flow. In any case, I don’t think “target=new” is the evil monster some would make it out to be, and in the world of connected content I’d like to see it embraced a bit more.
Ideally, the reference links would appear in such a way as to not disrupt the reader’s flow in the current article. Perhaps something akin to the rather annoying and generally useless Snap Shots functionality some sites such as TechCrunch are in love with is a model, but it’s difficult to display much more than images in a way that makes sense in less than a full-window view.
Not long ago, online content was a series of silos. Newspaper articles republished online would rarely include in-content links, and there was so little original web content out there that linking between pieces wasn’t an issue. That’s changed, of course, so I think more thought is needed on how to best flow users through interconnected content.