Published by deborah.woehr on 24 Jul 2006 at 11:28 am
How Many Browser Windows Will Turn Off a Reader?
Kevin at LexBlog Blog has a good debate going on right now about what turns readers away from your blog. He believes that formatting your links to pop up new windows will annoy readers and turn them away. While that issue may be valid with some, the majority of his commenters have stated ways that they work around this.
Having your links open to new windows in order to keep your readers isn’t a big issue as it once was, thanks to the tab feature in browsers like Firefox. In fact, I like having the links formatted this way so I can continue reading the blog that I landed on, once I’m finished reading the article that they referred me to. Oftentimes, I’ll shrink the new window so I can finish reading the blog entry first.
How about you? Are you annoyed when a link opens up a new window?
Jim on 24 Jul 2006 at 12:26 pm #
It really depends. Generally, my rule of thumb is that if the link is internal to my site, it stays in the same window; external site, new window. And I try not to abuse links, since too many just tend to overwhelm the reader anyway.
Diddums on 24 Jul 2006 at 2:55 pm #
On my old Mac I was a little worried as it would start squawking when too many windows were opened. On the new Mac there’s no problem - I usually breathe a sigh of relief if a new window opens, because I’m reluctant to move on from the source. In fact I get annoyed when I accidentally have something new opening in a window I’ve not finished with yet - I usually go straight back, copy the link I was following, and put it in a new tab or something. I guess we all have different habits :-).
Mike on 24 Jul 2006 at 4:01 pm #
I middle click everything to open it in a new tab so I don’t really notice which way there are supposed to open. I will say that I hate the Javascript pop up links that have to be opened in a new browser.
deborah.woehr on 24 Jul 2006 at 6:39 pm #
Jim: That’s a good practice to have.
Diddums: I had the same problem with my iMac and System 8.6. I’d experience crashes all the time if I had too many windows open. We learn to work with what we have.
Mike: I hate those Javascript pop up links, too. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to force quit Firefox because my system got hung up.
Mariann on 27 Jul 2006 at 9:07 am #
To avoid links that open in new windows, I’ve gotten into the habit of OPTION-clicking on links to open them in new Safari tabs. When I’m using the PC at work, I’ve also got Firefox set up to open new windows in tabs instead. The downside is that if the page in question is slow to load or has some scripting errors, I can crash the entire browser… but thanks to the history tools, I can usually recover most of what I had open.
deborah.woehr on 27 Jul 2006 at 5:46 pm #
That history tool has come in handy for me on several occasions, too.