On May 4, 2007, at 4:48 PM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
At 01:32 -0700 UTC, on 2007-05-04, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
Safari indicates in the status bar hover feedback when a link will
open in a new window, new frame or new tab, or if it will download,
if we can tell based on target setting and the user's currently
depressed modifier keys.
Ah, yes. I forgot. I quite like that behaviour. However, by default
the
entire Status Bar isn't visible in Safari, so just how many users
actually
benefit from this is the question ;)
I think the kind of users who would benefit are also likely to know
how to find the setting.
Unfortunately when the link action is JS we
can only say that it will run a script. So it's actually better
usability if the site can use target="_blank" compared to using
window.open(), at least in Safari.
Sorry, I know very little of javascript. Are you saying it is
technically
impossible for a UA to know beforehand what a script will do?
Yes. Figuring out what arbitrary code will do without executing it is
mathematically proven to be impossible. You can make an approximation
for a limited subset of cases, and I suppose if we wanted to we could
copy the whole browser scripting environment and simulate execution,
but that seems like an extreme solution to the problem.
[...] we don't have a set of modifiers to open in the current tab
in the current window. I suppose that might be useful in some cases.
Definitely. iCab allows that through the contextual menu ("Link-
>Open in This
Window"). It might be faster if it can also be done with modifier
keys.
Something along the lines of making Cmd-Opt-click to mean "open in
same
window, no matter what". Assuming that doesn't conflict with existing
behaviour, of course.
We already have quite a few link click modifiers taken, including Cmd-
Opt-click. I'll make a feature suggestion to add something.
Regards,
Maciej
