Comments on: 31 Days to Building a Better Blog – Day 22

By: Iowa Business 101 » Blog Archive » Proper Use of Your Blog Links

Iowa Business 101 » Blog Archive » Proper Use of Your Blog Links — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 18:34:37 +0000

[...] To ProBlogger thinking… [...]

By: Christian Connett

Christian Connett — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 03:04:25 +0000

Alright, I have read through and through the net, through this Blog, even checked out Andrew’s website (added him to my Blogroll). I have even CHANGED my original Blog post.

I am studying how to be a great Blogger, and a better writer. I have also been toying with utilizing a custom-made Blog system (my site).

First off, I have changed the whole idea of opening links in another window… You guys, I wish that I had my comments fixed a lot sooner, it is fixed now, so please leave a message after the beep.

Anyway, I am going to start purging the target=_blank!!!

Yea… Please forgive me for being hasty. But, I digress. My original thoughts were that you would keep your site open for the viewer/reader. They would not ‘lose’ your site…

So, target=_blank = no.

Thank you Darren, Andrew, Hart, and Dawn C… I am a changed man!!

Christian Connett, CPM

By: Andrew Kaufmann

Andrew Kaufmann — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 19:33:13 +0000

Well, the argument is less about “pretty” code and more about following standards. The standard says no target=”_blank”. There’s a lot to be said for following standards.

By: HART

HART — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:47:41 +0000

AARRGGHH!! Not the target=”_blank” argument again!

Yes .. code is poetry but there is a lot of pretty lousy poetry out there if you ask me – this is one of them. That’s all I will say about it.

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 22:56:09 +0000

I agree Andrew – as I posted it I wondered if i should say so (as I’ve tried to be neutral in posting links) but I’m not a fan of opening links in new windows either. I’m a believer that if people want a new window they will open it themselves. Yes you run the risk of losing a reader but you also won’t make your readers angry about it.

By: Andrew Kaufmann

Andrew Kaufmann — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 20:12:38 +0000

I wanted to leave a comment about the “Proper Use of Your Blog Links” on the author’s site, but it would not let me (an error about my email address not being valid — which it is…)

So I figure I’d leave it here.

An important reason a lot of people don’t use the “target” attribute in their anchor tag to open a new window is that in proper XHTML 1.0, that is not allowed. A site with that code will not validate.

The proper workaround is to use javascript to open a new window — but that’s not nearly as convenient.

That leaves many a designer in a quandary — do I want a validating site or a site that I can easily link to documents from, but open in a new window?

I decided to have all links open within the same window on my site. I decided to leave the choice of spawning browser windows up to my readers. Most people know how to open a link in a new window on their system, and I trust them to do that if they want to remain on my site.

I am not a fan of sites that assume I want a link opened in a new window. It’s one of those things that can really drive me away.