If a website forces a new tab when you don't want to open a new tab (as I don't), that's not friendly at all. There's no easy way to override that behavior, while it's easy to get the behavior you want.

It might provide a better experience for some people, but what about people who don't want links to open in new tabs?

Opening links in new tabs is trivial (e.g., middle-click). Does every web browser support an equally simple way to force a link to open in the current tab?

(On a related note, a problem I've been having lately is that many JavaScript-heavy sites have links that fail to open when middle-clicked. I wonder whether the people who were previously making unusable Flash sites have moved to JavaScript.)

HN is the site that modified the way I click on links. I started using the middle button instead of browsing like it was 1999.