Fixing the UX of hyperlinks

The problem description makes not clear to me why this is a problem. It describes an existing solution, and there is an easier one: middle mouse button click for new tab, normal mouse button for intab load. It is always a horror when some websites try to be smart and fuck that up (looking at you, kimono – you are great but this part of your UI is not).

Is there something special about those specific links as well that makes the existing solution not work? If not, I doubt that indicators would help much – the specific control we have already is better than the time-consuming task of interpreting those.

You don't need a new UI: just disallow the ability of a site to open a link in a new window or tab, and leave that ability in the hands of the user, where it always belonged.

How about people stop changing what links do, and let the user decide by via right click or ctrl+click/cmd+click?

This is a great idea, but where's the solution to those web pages that put links in javascript that do stuff like window.open("url") that forces a new window, or do_postback("url"), that prevents you choosing to open it in a new tab? They can go die in a fire.

What bothers me so greatly are these new web "apps" that are trying to behave like a desktop app and have no ability to right click and open in new tab. I can think of no use case where one shouldn't be allowed to do this. I have to use some tools that are like this and even duplicTe tab causes me to navigate thru 5 pages to get back where I was

I rarely ever want to open something in a new window. I do however like opening pages in new tabs so that I can finish doing what I'm doing on the current page.

I'm a Mac user. If I want to absolutely open a new tab when clicking on a hyperlink, I just hold down the command key and click on the link and ta-da it opens in a new tab (there's an equivalent for this in windows). If I want to open in a new window I just hold command + shift and click on the link.

Almost as annoying as pages filled with static content that don't follow the HTML design principles and fail to render properly with JS blocked.

Does anyone really open links with left-click if they still need the current page?

I always middle-click.

It bothers me more that most web-sites don't indicate in- and outbound links.

Often I get a bunch of links on news pages, which just let me hop around on their system, while the link text indicates that I get to a source of information.

We considered indicating this in Chrome, but the problem was reliability - because JS can execute when you click, we actually can't tell you what will happen next, and we don't like showing unreliable UI (extensions, however, are great for this sort of thing).

Personally, I use add-ons to force every link to open in a new tab. Because when I click a link, it is more like reference/supplement reading, but I have not finished to consume the original page.

If a link is simply to reference material (wikipedia blue links / blogs that reference earlier posts / etc), then I'd ideally like the new page to open in a new column and either occlude or squish my content to the side. I don't want to save those for later or leave what I'm doing; I want the contents of both, now.

I was just thinking about this problem today: lack of information as to whether a link is an external link (different site), an internal link (same site) or anchor link (same page).

I cmd+click everything and inevitably have four or five tabs of the same page. It's probably the most minor of inconveniences but the serendipity compelled me to comment.

It'd be near if instead, these symbols were shown (but not interacted with), depending on your hover state on the link. So if you hover with control pressed, the "new tab" icon would be displayed. Normal hover would display the "current window" icon.

Safari does this already. It shows "Open <URL> in a new tab" in the status bar when clicking will open in a new tab, and same for windows. This text also changes in response to modifier keys.

I'm surprised that Chrome doesn't do this!

Does anybody who keeps up with browser extensions know if there's a way to disable any kind of ad-hoc link handling on Firefox? When I tab-click I'd like to get a new window, always:)

I don't think this is really a problem, but I upvoted because I like the thought experiment. I love the icons. I would not want them in my browser.

Or, you just always use target="_blank". Problem solved. Almost never do I want to load a real hyperlink in the same tab.

This seems like a good candidate for a browser extension.