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Links open on page instead of new tab #1919

Open GiantCrocodile opened 5 years ago

GiantCrocodile commented 5 years ago

Please have links open in a new tab instead of on the same page. Having someone try and do informative readings or extended processes and then find their way back to the documentation is painful. For example, if I am reading this page and click the Azure portal link to create a new resource, it opens in the same tab and once I'm done creating my resource I have to find this page again to remember what I was going to do next.

Original issue: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs/issues/38462#issuecomment-530473141

supernova-eng commented 5 years ago

I believe this is by-design, but @shirgoldbird can confirm.

cc: @DuncanmaMSFT

GiantCrocodile commented 5 years ago

Even if it is by design, it is a bit user-unfriendly due to its lower usability ;).

TheKevinWang commented 1 year ago

What is the design rationale here? How does this accomplish anything other than fucking up usability?

Duncanma commented 1 year ago

  1. Azure Portal links specifically do open in a new tab, along with a few other cases where the idea is you are jumping out to do a task and then coming back... or doing them all at the same time... etc.

  2. But in general a web page shouldn't take the choice away from a user. Links on the web are intended to open in the same page, that's the default behavior for HTML/browsers/etc. ... if the user wants to open in a new page they should be able to chose that (right click and pick 'open in a new tab', middle click on the mouse, 'cmd+click' on a Mac, etc). Standard web behavior.

I'm not at Microsoft, or on the Docs team there, anymore, but I still think this is a good decision and have written about it as a general web principle here: https://www.duncanmackenzie.net/blog/do-not-open-new-tabs/

TheKevinWang commented 4 months ago

2. But in general a web page shouldn't take the choice away from a user. Links on the web are intended to open in the same page, that's the default behavior for HTML/browsers/etc. ... if the user wants to open in a new page they should be able to chose that (right click and pick 'open in a new tab', middle click on the mouse, 'cmd+click' on a Mac, etc). Standard web behavior.

The issue is not that it does not open in a new tab by default, but rather that there is no way to open in a new tab. A common use case: A user is looking through a list of role assignments or group memberships, and the user wants to hunt down specific users/groups. Without a way to open in new tab, the user has to either copy+paste and search in a new tab, or constantly go back and forth. The usability here either way is absolutely garbage compared to opening in a new tab.

I really wonder what M$ is thinking and whether they even use their own tool. The most basic of high school web projects offers this capability.