External Link Icon for Images?

[latenitefilms]

@geoffreymcgill - having an external link icon for images that have a link seems a little weird? For example:

I feel like the new outbound feature should only apply to text links? Thoughts?

[geoffreymcgill]

This is a defect. During our testing, somehow we did not notice this case. 🤦‍♂️

We will remove the icon, but would you prefer if the other properties of outbound still apply? such as target and custom? Feels like they should.

This should be an easy fix and we will make a v3.1.1 patch release as soon as it's fixed.

[latenitefilms]

Yes, I think they should too.

[geoffreymcgill]

There are a few issues going on here and we are working on some solutions.

As a temporary fix, you can remove the {target="_blank"} custom attribute on that link.

After the next release, that custom attribute will not be required anyways, so removing now is not a problem and it will just start working as expected with the next release.

I will keep this thread updated with our progress.

[latenitefilms]

We currently use {target="_blank"} a LOT on FCP Cafe. Am I safe to just do a global find and replace to remove all of them?

It might also be worth clarifying if the exclude parameter formatting? For example, is this valid or do I need to add a wildcard, etc?

outbound:
  exclude:
    - github.com/CommandPost/FCPCafe/

[geoffreymcgill]

If the path of the link is to an external URL, Retype will treat as outbound links if you remove the {target="_blank"} custom attribute. An external URL would be one that starts with https or http.

If the path is internal and you remove the {target="_blank"} custom attribute, then Retype will not treat the link as an external outbound link and clicking the link will not open in a new tab.

If noticed the following scenario in your project:

[Make a suggestion!](/contribute/){target="_blank"}

If {target="_blank"} is removed, the link will not open in a new tab, as Retype would classify as an internal link.

is this valid or do I need to add a wildcard, etc?

Yes, it is valid. Your exclude will exclude all outbound links that contain the value github.com/CommandPost/FCPCafe/ anywhere in the path.

outbound:
  exclude:
    - github.com/CommandPost/FCPCafe/

Hope this helps.

[latenitefilms]

If noticed the following scenario in your project:

Good spotting! I'm not sure if I did that deliberately or not, but seems like a mistake regardless. Thanks!

[geoffreymcgill]

I also noticed the following link:

[here](https://github.com/CommandPost/FCPCafe/graphs/contributors){target="_blank"}

but you exclude github.com/CommandPost/FCPCafe/ from the outbound functionality.

No big deal here, but if you remove {target="_blank"} from that link, it will not open in a new Tab as Retype excludes that link from the outbound parsing.

---

You have a lot of links like [GitHub](https://github.com){target="_blank"} or [Retype](https://retype.com){target="_blank"}, and removing the {target="_blank"} would help clean up your content. There would be no change after removing {target="_blank"} because Retype already treats those links as outbound and sets the target="_blank".

---

Then I also noticed [Markdown](https://www.markdownguide.org) on one of your pages, without {target="_blank"}. The nice thing about the new outbound functionality is that Retype automatically found that external/outbound link and will open in a new Tab, even though you might have mistakingly missed adding the {target="_blank"} custom attribute.

---

All those are minor issues, but removing as many (or all of) the {target="_blank"} custom attributes as you can will help clean up your content. It's better to rely on the parser to find all the external links and then just tweak things with the exclude and include configs.

Hope this helps.

[geoffreymcgill]

Using the regex search pattern (\[.*\]\(http.*\))\{target="_blank"\} should find all the paths with outbound links. Looks like there are at least 730 instances, maybe more.

Once those outbound links are cleaned up, then you can just search for {target="_blank"} to find any remaining instances that should only be set on internal links. Probably just remove all those instances.

Plus I see you have some {target="_blank"} instances in your .js scripts. Good idea to clean those up too.

[geoffreymcgill]

This issue has been fixed and the fix will be included in the upcoming Retype v3.2 release, which should happen very soon.

@latenitefilms Thanks for reporting this issue!

[geoffreymcgill]

Retype v3.2 has been released.