[whatwg] Proposal for Links to Unrelated Browsing Contexts

[Charlie Reis]

On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 11:47 PM, Adam Barth <w3c at adambarth.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Glenn Maynard <glenn at zewt.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 8:26 PM, Bjartur Thorlacius <svartman95 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
> >> On Wed, Jun 06, 2012 at 07:32:34PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> >> > Please don't encourage yet more sites to open new tabs when I didn't
> ask
> >> > for it.
>

I don't see this as any different from using target=_blank or window.open.
 The same popup restrictions would apply.  This link type wouldn't make
much sense on a same-window navigation, in my opinion.


> >> It's merely a new browsing context IIUC, not necessarily a new window
> >> (frame, tab, tile or whatever it's called this year). Someone that
> >> understands the codebase of a modern browser could even make the back
> >> button work, although he would have to restrict write access to the
> history
> >> stack or tree as well, for security reasons.
> >
> > He's saying he wants it to force target=_blank, though.
>
> That doesn't seem necessary.  Why not navigate the current window to a
> new document in an unrelated browsing context?
>
> Adam
>

That would hit all the problems Michal brought up, where you might target
an existing window or iframe, causing existing references to the window to
no longer be valid.  That could be harder for browser vendors to implement.
 I do think it would be cleanest to have it open in a new window, using
target=_blank.

Charlie