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Arguments for opening links in a new tab or window

I feel like I’ve always been in the minority on this: I don’t think you should use target="_blank" on links. Unless you have a very good reason, that is, like there is currently-playing media that would stop, or a user has unsaved work you don’t want to interrupt. But I find that most people disagree, and have their own philosophy like “links to external sites should open in a new tab”. Jason Grigsby digs into this and enumerates the reasons people think this way, which is stuff like “well then they can get back to the original site easier”. That makes a smidge of sense, but it breaks the back button which I feel like is a stronger reason not to do it. And much crappier reasons like “it increases our time-on-site metric in Google Analytics.”

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