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Re: Popup windows and JAWS

for

From: Steven Henderson
Date: Oct 28, 2009 5:30AM


Mailto links ... where to start. Here is a link to some issues that I agree
with:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/12/06/10-reasons-to-avoid-mailto-lin
ks/

In my experience, back in university and in corporate work environments,
mailto links would default to a mail client assigned to your system user
profile (usually Outlook) which is fine. Outside these environments however,
it is largely a different story ... people don't generally use mail clients
but instead use web mail such as gmail, hotmail or other social network
hybrids. For those people (generally the people I build websites for) mailto
links result in a blank window - very unprofessional and definitely not
identifying with the change of times of my target users.

My rule is, if it for internal company web pages, then they are definitely
handy. Otherwise, they don't serve the vast majority of other users.



-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of James Leslie
Sent: 28 October 2009 10:58
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Popup windows and JAWS

In general I agree, but unfortunately client demands will tend to always
win. Many of the sites I produce are help/FAQ sites that relate to
specific parts of a clients site (such as shopping cart) and it would be
probably worse for a user to be removed from halfway through a purchase
to find out information for something, than to open a (warned about)
popup.

Can I ask what is so wrong with mailto links? I still use them in places
and have never had a problem with them, or heard of any?

J

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Steven
Henderson
Sent: 28 October 2009 10:45
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Popup windows and JAWS

I have to say that I agree that how a window opens should be the user's
choice. The web browser is a single application instance that a user has
chosen to open. They expect 'it' to open as a new window because it is a
windowed application, but to then treat links within that browser
instance as additional application windows is just plain wrong (for the
same reasons Simius points out). Imagine if every action you wanted to
carry out in your daily applications such as bolding text in Word or
using a tool in Photoshop prompted a new window ... ouch, that'd be a
real b*****d!

I think the target attribute belongs in history like mailto links
(shudder).


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