New Browser Windows

Posted by: Josh Walsh in User Experience.

When a user clicks a link on your (or any, for that matter) website, they expect the new web page to appear in its place. To navigate back to places they have come from, they click a ‘Back’ button on their browser. This has become normal for all internet users and is the experience they expect to have. Breaking the expectations of your users can lead to confusion and disappointment: two words usability experts despise.

It’s amazing to me that this is still a controversial topic.

Links to External Sites

Web designers have insisted for years that we open links to external websites in new windows to avoid losing precious website visitors who may be prematurely leaving their website. I haven’t found any data in my research to backup this fact. In fact, we’ve seen the opposite in our usability testing. We’ve noticed, that when a user finds a website of value that they wish to further explore, they bookmark it. If the user is ready to leave, they will. You can’t trick users into staying around when they don’t want to.

Worse yet, if you open a link in a new window and the user decides to go back, they cannot use the back button. The back button will only go back to the first page you saw in that window. Research shows that most people focus on the currently open window, and aren’t continually aware of what’s going on outside that window. Out of sight, out of mind. While savvy Internet users quickly pick up on what happened, many people feel trapped if they can’t go back.

If my opinion isn’t enough to influence you, I suggest you check out one of the major points put forth by the w3c for Content Accessibility.

Until user agents allow users to turn off spawned windows, do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear and do not change the current window without informing the user.

World Wide Web Consortium

Windows Galore

We love windows. No, I don’t mean the Microsoft kind. Rather, computers have become multitasking machines. We often have 5, 10 or even more windows at a time. Every window that we open runs the risk of getting lost in the clutter that is the taskbar.

All major web browsers allow the user to open a link in a new window or tab if they so choose by right-clicking on the link. Granted, not all users know about this.

The exception to the rule

Jakob Nielson recommends that you open non-web documents in a new window. This includes PDF files, Word and Excel files, among others. I couldn’t agree more.