| "Well HackerNews, what say you? I dare you to increase your traffic and engagement." HackerNews [sic], I dare you to allow your users to choose how they want to open new links, even if the mouse/keyboard mechanism for opening them in new tabs isn't completely 100% intuitive to some subset of web users. I dare you to ignore any so-called "SEO" who thinks he's discovered an incredible "engagement" technique that's really just another tired way of tricking people into staying on your website. I dare you to consult the relevant RFCs and acknowledge that the behavior of target="_blank" isn't news to anyone here. I dare you to recognize that not every single thing on the internet has to "optimized" to get more traffic, and that "engagement" isn't just about people clicking on links. I dare you to consider the possibility that we now have a situation where, thanks to the SEO frenzy of the past few years, there is no "correct" default behavior for links anymore, and it might be better to just let the user have control over it via their browser preferences. I dare you to tell the world which way you prefer to open links and why it is better. What say you? WHAT SAY YOU? |