Web developers & designers: Please STOP messing around with how my browser works. In this case, I want to open a link in a new tab, so I Cmd-Click[0] only to have my request ignored with the new page in the current tab ... but then I do get a new tab with the original article loaded into it. This might be fine for your experimentation, but it's not fine to force your incompatible UX onto my browser.
Other things that I've seen lately that are detestable:
- prevent me from zooming on mobile
- similarly, covering your actual content with an ever-present menu or heading (and I can't zoom to get around it)
- change the operation of the "back" keyboard shortcut to navigate articles on your site rather than the actual history in my browser
There are other things that are annoying, too, but they all boil down to some web site developer deciding to repurpose my browser's UI to their site. Please stop.
[0] Google Chrome 39.0.2171.95 (64-bit) on OS X 10.10.1
It's for Google Analytics tracking of links. The links in the page use Javascript:
<a onclick="goTracked("link-external", "http://octopart.com/bb-bblk-000-circuitco+electronics-26478322");" class="external" href="#http://octopart.com/bb-bblk-000-circuitco+electronics-26478322" target="_blank">BeagleBone Black is readily available all over the world</a>
then the Javascript function in question:
function goTracked(action, link) {
ga('send', 'event', 'exit', action, link);
setTimeout('document.location = "' + link + '"', 100);
}
So, if you try to Cmd-Click a link to open it in a new tab (or middle-click, which is my preferred method), the target of the link is opened in a new tab. But the link's "href" target is just a fragment, so it opens the article in the new tab. 100 ms later, the current tab is redirected to the "actual" link target.
Web developers & designers: Please STOP messing around with how my browser works. In this case, I want to open a link in a new tab, so I Cmd-Click[0] only to have my request ignored with the new page in the current tab ... but then I do get a new tab with the original article loaded into it. This might be fine for your experimentation, but it's not fine to force your incompatible UX onto my browser.
Other things that I've seen lately that are detestable:
- prevent me from zooming on mobile
- similarly, covering your actual content with an ever-present menu or heading (and I can't zoom to get around it)
- change the operation of the "back" keyboard shortcut to navigate articles on your site rather than the actual history in my browser
There are other things that are annoying, too, but they all boil down to some web site developer deciding to repurpose my browser's UI to their site. Please stop.
[0] Google Chrome 39.0.2171.95 (64-bit) on OS X 10.10.1