“Open in a new window?”

Five innocuos little words.

This may seem like small detail, but it’s one that can fill people with an allconsuming rage if you’re not careful.

Does opening a website in a new window make you do this?

It can also mean they leave your site and never return (or are never allowed to return).

I used to think I was always a same window kind of guy – keep it simple, keep the same window. Recently however I changed my mind. Let me tell you why…

Tabbed Browsing

Tabs - I love you

Or should I say ‘godsend’. You can browse multiple pages in the same window. Remember the days of millions of separate IEs in a huge pile up your desktop? Thankfully Firefox came along and saved us, without a moment to spare.

With tabs however I could (and can) easily keep… tabs (who groaned?) on multiple pages with a minumum of fuss. A lot of people have yet to discover the joys of tabs – please do so immediately!

Why would I want to browse multiple pages at the same time you ask? Well…

Social Media

Social media - what you really do at work

Following conveniently on the heels of tabbed browsing was social networking, in particlar blogging and social bookmarking. When you click that little link or button to share the amazing funny page you’ve just found, not every social media site makes it easy to navigate back. While I knew already that some websites are terrible from a usability point of view, after the explosion of social media people are jumping between pages, forms and comments boxes much more than in past years.

The advent of blogging just prior to the social media explosion also fuelled cross linking between sites, with many comments boxes offering this option before you submit.

The need to reference multiple sources and pages has greatly increased in order to compile blog posts, research articles and generally share content quickly.

So my question to you is this:

SEOs & Geeks (Firefox and Chrome users) - Are you a same tab person, or a new tab person?

Norms & the unenlightened (IE users) – Are you a same window person, or a new window person?

"fascinating post old bean"