On 8/8/06, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/8/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Just because I'm controversial I'll disagree. Gmail, for example, always opens *every* external link in a new window. It works extremely well - you never have to worry about "losing your gmail window". It wouldn't be a bad thing if MediaWiki did similar - you're unlikely to really want to navigate away from Wikipedia, for instance, when you follow a link - most likely you'll read it then want to come back.
The user's browser can override any behaviour, but that's not to say that providing good default behaviour isn't necessary.
Gmail is a special case because it makes such heavy use of Ajax, which isn't typically stored in the browser history in case you want to go back. But as for the general rule, it would be true that providing good defaults is a must, except that browsers tend not to provide as effortless a way to stay in the same window as to open a new one.
More importantly, what percentage of people use wikipedia as a hub like they do gmail?
I typically visit through on my way to bigger and better things - and don't really care if I lose my window. With gmail, it's a hub page for me (I run my life out of it) and the view I have open is stateful. These things don't apply to mediawiki, unless I'm editing, in which case I'm not likely to be clicking new links from that window. Even on the intranet instance of it I run, I'm perfectly content for it to link in the same window - if I happen to want it to be otherwise, I can control-click, use a context menu, etc.
For a highly interactive site, new-windows make sense... but I don't really see it making sense for MW.