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Re: Reason For Links Opening In New Window

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Jan 5, 2007 9:40AM

On Fri, 5 Jan 2007, Susan R. Grossman wrote:

> target="blank" is no longer supported in the xhtml spec,

It is. Please refrain from spreading false rumors and check the actual
specifications before citing them. The target attribute is in the XHTML
1.0 specification just as in HTML 4.01. By the way, there is a difference
between target="blank" and target="_blank".

> but there are
> reasons to occasionally use accessible pop-up windows.

There's really no such thing as an accessible pop-up window on the WWW.
There might be in a limited environment where users are aware of pop-up
features and quite capable of controlling them.

> Besides the reasons already stated,

No acceptable reasons were stated.

> for many government sites (and some large corporate), it's
> policy to force links that go to an outside web page (not in the current
> domain) to open in a pop-up window with a message about "leaving the site"

That's a mistake on several accounts, including accessibility. It's quite
illogical to present it as an argument in favor of something that is
implied in this wrong idea itself.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/