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Why should links open in the same window?

14 March 2009

Want to start a heated debate in the office? Ask the people around you whether they prefer web links to open in a new window or in the same one. You’ll be sure to get a range of energetic answers from your colleagues.

Ok, it’s not the most divisive topic of all time, but as we become increasingly dependant on computers in our daily lives, more and more people have an opinion on the matter. We’d like to give ours.

An accessibility issue

When Tim Berners-Lee first envisioned the world wide web, he had in mind a fantastic way to share information easily with people all over the world. As the internet really is for everyone, it is important to ensure that the information we provide on our website (or that our clients provide on theirs) are accessible to all. Right? Isn’t that why we have a website, to share information about our company, our organisation, our products or our services?

Sharing information with as many people as possible means that we need to consider our audience. Many users on the internet today have disabilities. Those disabilities can be colour-blindness, low vision or even total blindness. Other disabilities may prevent a visitor from using a mouse to help surf. So, when we make websites we do so in a way that still allows those users to access the content on our website.

To answer the specific question posed in the title of this post, the reason that links should open in the same window is one of accessibility. Some people surf the web with software that reads web pages to them. These programmes, like Lynx and the Linux Screen Reader, get very confused when links open in a new tab or browser window. Links that open in new windows are impossible for text-readers to track. So, by making links open in new windows, we would effectively dismiss those disabled users from our audience. (For loads of information about web accessibility, check out the Web Accessibility Initiative.)

A few tips

So, if you do prefer to have links to outside websites open in new tabs, what can you do?

  1. If you’re using Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox, hold down the Ctrl button when left-clicking on a link as that will open the link in a new window or tab.
  2. If you use a wheel mouse, clicking on a link with the wheel will open a link in a new tab in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox
  3. If you’re surfing in Internet Explorer 6, then you can right click and select the ‘Open in New Window’ option.