Dear web developers

In tabbed browsers, clicking a link with the middle button opens the link you’ve clicked in a new tab. This is a useful piece of functionality.

If you set your web page up to get round this feature, so that clicking the middle button opens the link in the same tab as the page you’re viewing, that doesn’t make you a clever web guru. It makes you a fecking idiot.

Commentisfree, Microsoft Outlook Web Access, Twitter – this means you.

5 thoughts on “Dear web developers

  1. I note your twitter comment:

    Comment WIN: "Melanie Phillips would accuse her husband of anti-semitism if he didn't do the dishes on time"

    Do i recall you having a 'blog runin with that said husband once?

  2. JB, I don't know what browser you're using but that's certainly not my experience of CiF – got an example?

    What really gets me are flash carousels (see totalfilm.com ) in which it's impossible to load the link in a new tab since the link is inside the flash object, so even right-clicking won't give you the option.

  3. Yes, he wrote a column about travelling to India without a visa, and how this meant some unpleasant arguing with silly bureaucrats. I suggested he was an idiot for failing to get an Indian visa before travelling to India, damn lucky not to be deported when he arrived in India without a visa, and that any Indian travelling to the UK and saying "ooh, I didn't realise I needed a visa in advance" would be lucky not to be thrown in Yarls Wood, never mind denied entry. He didn't like that…

    & anything to do with the comments on CiF (eg clicking the permalink for a comment). They're loaded as some bizarre user-side script, so behave weirdly when the page is loading as well.

  4. After a long and horrible and eventually successful hunt for girlfriend's missing file last night, I have to ask why on earth Microsoft ever thought it was a good idea to download e-mail attachments as proper, read/write files, but put them in an incredibly obscure temp folder, so you can work on the file and then save it and then have it overwritten at the next reboot, which being Microsoft will be along in a minute?

    KDE Kontact makes them read-only until you save them somewhere intelligent…

  5. As far as I can make out, it's to discourage the use of non-Microsoft applications: if you always use Outlook, then you'll know to always save any attachment to the desktop before working on it, whereas if you're used to sensible software then you'll cause yourself Great Woe and Suffering.

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