Links not taking users off to a new tab

Arantor

OK, this is something that has been talked about a lot at SMF in the past. By default, SMF pushes all links into a new tab, regardless of whether the user wants it or not.

Here, links off-site are not pushed into an external tab, meaning users that don't know about right click and push to new tab, or middle clicking, are pushed off-site every link. There are a lot of users that aren't technical out there.

Also, I can't wait to see what happens when you have real users coming along that want to block right click. The interesting fact (and possibly TRWTF) is that for once it actually makes some sense to block right clicks. Not a lot, just less insane than it is on normal websites. (For those wondering, disabling right click protects your content from being copied. Honestly. It's tragic having to dispel this myth perhaps once or twice a month.)

ben_lubar

Open all external links in a new tab

Personally, if I don't want a link to open in a new tab, it shouldn't open in a new tab.

And Community Server never opened new tabs without my permission, so do you really want to change Discourse to something worse than community server™?

Arantor

That's nice for you. The fact it's buried in a list of other, seemingly unrelated, checkboxes means I didn't find it when I looked the first time, and had to actively go through and read every item.

Would it not be a logical thing to default that to on?

PJH

@Arantor said:

and had to actively go through and read every item.

Awww... diddums.

No. Seriously? This is a problem for you?

ChaosTheEternal

@Arantor said:

logical

Where do you think we are?

Arantor

When items are grouped logically and sanely, no, it's not a problem. But a bunch of stuff jumbled together where it's practically a wall of text... that's not smart. I'm also bemused that this software considers email and password to be preferences. Chalk another up to the WTFometer.

@ChaosTheEternal Of course, silly me, I forgot that we were using a forum software that manages to rival even the other open source monstrosities for questionable UI design. Seriously.

sam

@Arantor said:

When items are grouped logically and sanely, no, it's not a problem. But a bunch of stuff jumbled together where it's practically a wall of text..

Let's turn this into something productive then, can you suggest a better ordering?

dfcowell

@Arantor said:

But a bunch of stuff jumbled together where it's practically a wall of text...

If four checkboxes with one-line descriptors are a wall of text then your OP is fucking this:

Seriously, it takes about 5 seconds to skim what those options are.

Arantor

Firstly, I'd move the first half the page off the page. Username/name/email/password/avatar/profile/about me/location/website are not things that I consider preferences. They are part of my profile and/or account, but they're not my preferences as such.

Preferences to me means 'things that shape my experience' not 'things that are about me', if that makes sense.

The stuff about emails... I'm not sure whether I'd personally put that on another page or not, or break it into a section of 'notifications' in general, where the first part is 'how I want to be notified', the second part would be 'what users want to be notified about', and have the 'other' stuff left as the only "real" preferences. But I'm going on what I've seen in the other forum software where everything seems to be kind of where you expect it to be, with sub pages breaking down the different kinds of things. Experience also suggests that it becomes easier for plugin authors to put relevant settings together better.

@dfcowell It's not so much a wall of text. It's the fact that they all blur together because there's nothing visually distinct about them. Consider my OP... there were paragraph breaks. Imagine I didn't have paragraph breaks and it was one huge dense block of text. You'd have a much harder time making sense of it. It's like UI snowblindness.

Because there's not just those options together - you have most of a screenful of options that are pretty closely packed together (and lots of whitespace everywhere else except between options where it might be useful)

ChaosTheEternal

@Arantor said:

I'd move the first half the page off the page.

I agree with this. Things like my username, email address, avatar, etc. aren't really preferences.

The rest, not so much. It could probably do with reorganizing and better categorization (having a category called Other in the middle of the page, mostly), but there aren't a lot of options where you can overlook something if you are looking at everything (15 preferences that can be set in total).

@Arantor said:

Imagine I didn't have paragraph breaks and it was one huge dense block of text.

So pretty much like the majority of new users on CS that got the plain text editor when they went to post.

Filed under: [I was a long-time lurker, so I saw a lot](#tag), [and now I remember why I do a <hr> and not the markdown version](#tag)

Arantor

It's not so much that I overlooked it - because once I knew it was there I found it straight away.

chubertdev

This sounds familiar.

http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/post-i-choo-choo-choose-you/612/55?u=chubertdev

end

Anyway, feature exists, so I think we are good here.

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