No More Pop-Ups for External Links
After moving to Mozilla Firefox 0.8, I noticed that the new window used to open external links from this blog was being killed by the built-in pop-up blocker. This prompted me to do something I’ve been contemplating for a long while and just do away with the external window all together.
I used Movable Type’s find & replace feature to remove (I hope) every target attribute from every entry on the site. If you happen to run across any that weren’t hit, please let me know.
What if you really like having external links open in new windows without having to middle-click, CTRL-click, SHIFT-click, or perform some other gymnastics? You’ll be happy to know that I’ll be putting a preference checkbox near the top of every page in the near future that will allow you to choose this option for yourself. There’s a bit of JavaScript debugging to do first, however.
I usually do not like pop ups, more like hate them. However I have become use to the way MT uses them to their advantage and I think its done professionally. However I understand the problem if people are waiting around and are not seeing the text box to enter their comments.
Comment by Blaine Hilton — February 18, 2004 @ 6:07 pm
Actually, I’d never used pop-ups for comments. I was even stupider than that, using the “target” attribute to open all links to other sites in a new window.
The idea was to keep from losing readers when people clicked on off-site links and never made their way back to my blog. When the link never seems to work in the first place, however, people just assume you’re an idiot and leave.
Oh well, for those in the know there’s still [SHIFT]-click in IE and tabbed browsing in Mozilla, Safari, Opera… everyone else really. Gee, don’t you IE folks start to feel like you’re missing something?
Comment by Adam — February 29, 2004 @ 1:23 pm