[Sigia-l] Usability of launching new browser window?

[Benjamin Protas]

There IS consistency on the issue...or at least, as long as web designers 
don't FORCE links to open in a new browser window there is.  If you, as a 
user, wants the link to open in a new browser window, you can hold down 
the Option key (on the Mac -- I'm not sure of the equivalent on Windows, 
but it is either Ctrl or Alt) while clicking the link, and it opens in a 
new windows.

By FORCING a link to open in a new window, you are goign against what the 
user expects to happen, and this is a bad thing.  Being consistent with 
the rest of the web is an important component of usability, as is leaving 
the USER in control instead of the DESIGNER telling the user what he or 
she really wants.

The ability to use a single modifier key to control the behavior of the 
'clicking a link' action is what Raskin refers to as a quasimode in "The 
Humane Interface", and is a good interface design element that encourages 
habit formation -- if users know how to have content appear where they 
want it to on one site, they do on every site. If the user is more 
comfortable navigating many windows than clicking Back, as you are, then 
you have the power to do so on any site you choose.

ben


On Saturday, July 27, 2002, at 11:32 AM, m o r r y wrote:

>
> As a user I immensely like when an outside link opens in a new browser
>  window and the rationale presented in the link below that it "breaks" the
>  back button doesn't persuade me.  The whole reason I like the new window 
> is
>  exactly because I don't want to use the back button. Back is great if you
>  have to go back one or two or MAYBE three windows but at the end of the 
> day
>  it's always much easier and quicker for ME to close the new browser 
> window
>  (one action) and there I'm back to the place I started.  It's rare that 
> I
>  ever follow an outside link only to one page. Often times I go deeper and
>  deeper and sometimes follow more outside links at that point it becomes
>  dizzying and a useless waste of time to hit the back key 20 times, for
>  example.
>
>  The one drawback I have found is that there is no consistency on the 
> issue
>  and over the years I've gotten used to just clicking my mouse to open a 
> new
>  browser window which doesn't always work if the link is already set to
>  target to a new window.