I do UI\UX design and coding for a living, so when I look at things like this, it flags me. For example, let's say that someone designed a car where you had to stick your finger in your ear while turning the key to start it. I could honestly say to you, "It's not that difficult to stick your finger in your ear while turning the key", and that's true enough. But... would you buy that car? I mean, why is it really necessary in the first place?
Most news aggregate web sites that I visit on a daily basis link to a new tab. This is very helpful, because I can browse down the page and click the links I'm interested in without losing the page I'm on at the time, then go read the articles, and tab back and forth to the list of news articles I was looking at. This works well and is how I "expect" it to work.
As the owner of a news aggregate web site, I want people to be "on and reading" my site. I don't want them to navigate away from my site, I want them to STAY on my site. To that end, having every single link on the page navigate away from the site makes no sense whatsoever, and requires extra care on behalf of my readers to use the site in a way that it should really work in the first place. That's inefficient and not in the best interests of HN or its readers.
If this was a how to site for people new to the internet open in a new tab would make sense but because the users on this site are more likely to be power users the control + click is almost second nature. I guess going the other way of ctrl + click opening in same tab could work also.
On mobile this seems to be a actual pain point because press and hold then open in a new tab is a hassle.
For me, I have the option of opening in a new tab by using middle-click, or opening in the same tab with left-click, and I use both options. If stories opened in new tabs by default then you would remove from me one of the options I use, without providing any benefit.
Oddly enough, this has been asked about before, and there has been some previous discussion. Here's a search:
There have also been people who have supplied GreaseMonkey scripts and bookmarklets. You might like to have a look at a few of these to see what I mean:
6 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 47.0 ms ] threadI do UI\UX design and coding for a living, so when I look at things like this, it flags me. For example, let's say that someone designed a car where you had to stick your finger in your ear while turning the key to start it. I could honestly say to you, "It's not that difficult to stick your finger in your ear while turning the key", and that's true enough. But... would you buy that car? I mean, why is it really necessary in the first place?
Most news aggregate web sites that I visit on a daily basis link to a new tab. This is very helpful, because I can browse down the page and click the links I'm interested in without losing the page I'm on at the time, then go read the articles, and tab back and forth to the list of news articles I was looking at. This works well and is how I "expect" it to work.
As the owner of a news aggregate web site, I want people to be "on and reading" my site. I don't want them to navigate away from my site, I want them to STAY on my site. To that end, having every single link on the page navigate away from the site makes no sense whatsoever, and requires extra care on behalf of my readers to use the site in a way that it should really work in the first place. That's inefficient and not in the best interests of HN or its readers.
If this was a how to site for people new to the internet open in a new tab would make sense but because the users on this site are more likely to be power users the control + click is almost second nature. I guess going the other way of ctrl + click opening in same tab could work also.
On mobile this seems to be a actual pain point because press and hold then open in a new tab is a hassle.
Oddly enough, this has been asked about before, and there has been some previous discussion. Here's a search:
https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28ope...
There have also been people who have supplied GreaseMonkey scripts and bookmarklets. You might like to have a look at a few of these to see what I mean:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3560941
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2469065
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4880204
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5085659
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866268
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549314
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5284186
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2353291
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3695029
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516933
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1621892
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5919030