Ah, didn't know I opened a can of worms here!
I'm dealing with a bunch of artists who barely know how to turn a computer on. While on the Wiki, they need "management." They get REALLY CONFUSED when they click on one word, and are still within the site, then click on the next word, and are warped off to who-knows-where. I get phone calls from people reporting problem with OTHER sites -- when I try to explain, they say, "But I clicked this thing on our site!"
The simplest solution is to draw a bright line between what is "here" and what is elsewhere. I make all my offsite links go 'target="offsite"' and there's no confusion at all.
Sophisticated users on sophisticated browsers can easily defeat that, at least with Safari (MacOS X). The status bar reads "in another window" when you point at such a link, and holding down Command forces it to open in a tab instead of a window.
The challenge is not to say, "The user is God, thou shalt not even risk annoying Him," but rather to figure out what works for your audience, and trust sophisticated users to be, well, sophisticated about it.
Thanks, Brion for the caching advice. That was it. I simply went to another computer, and it was working as expected.
:::: Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man. Martin Luther King Jr. :::: Jan Steinman http://www.Bytesmiths.com/Item/02CJDBGF