Two weeks ago I asked readers for their opinion on whether external links on your blog should Open in a New Window?
The conversation that resulted in the question was fascinating with 129 comments left (so far).
Today I reread the full conversation and tallied up the results and was a little surprised by the end results. Last time I saw this type of debate (in a forum) there was a resounding feeling that links should not open in new windows – however in this conversation the split was much more even with strong arguments for both ways of approaching links.
In fact the end result ended up coming out in favor of opening links in a new window.
I should note that there was about 5% of respondents who I excluded from these results because they either didn’t express a direct opinion or gave some sort of an ‘it depends’ response.
Thanks to everyone for participating in the discussion. If you’ve not had your say yet you can still comment on the original post.
I am newly putting up a site of my own, so my opinion is based on being a USER. As such, I like it when a new window opens so that I don’t lose my place with the original site. With enough browsing, it can be a real search to trace back, esp. if I was not real clear about the name or address of the original.
One more bit…MAC OS users don’t have this right, middle and left clicks. We can CTRL-click but don’t often think of it.
Links opening in new window can keep the users for long time in our site or blog.
this may seem like a silly question but – HOW can I make the links on my site open in a new page?