Should we open links in a new tab?
My position on this is, usually, no. Here are my reasons...
- It's the default browser behaviour, in the absence of any strong arguments to the contrary we should stick with defaults.
- It's even more the case in this situation because if you explicitly want to open a link in a new tab you have no way of knowing if that is the behaviour of the website so you need to right click cmd/alt-click anyway.
- Opening in a new tab breaks the browsers 'back' functionality
- Opening in a new tab resticts user choice i.e. it removes the option to not open the link in a new tab
- It just seems more tasteful
Times when I think it could be best to open a new tab/ window...
- Maybe if there some user initiated audio playing?
- There's a form that's half filled in (or some other work in progress, editing a spreadsheet, drawing a picture etc.) and you can't guarantee to persist the page's state. classic example here is Terms and Conditions links at the point of purchase