I am redirecting one page to another website. How do I make this open a new window?
I am redirecting one page to another website. How do I make this open a new window rather than leave the member site?
Charity
shared this idea
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Randall (Randy) Rensch
commented
Hopefully you've found the answer by now, but here goes ...
In the HTML window, edit the link to include a "target" tag. Typical advice is to add _blank, as in <a href=http://whatever.com" target="_blank"> . The target page will open in a new window or tab, depending on the user's browser and configuation. But if you have a lot of external links, that will clutter the user's screen with a new window or tab for each link. Depending on the situation, that could be desirable, or could be annoying. If you want each link to open in the same new tab or window, give it a name (as in <a href="http://whatever.com" target="Chtywin2") and use the same name in each link.
I usually add something distinctive to the name (as you see) so that the browser won't confuse it with a window opened by another site that they happened to give the same name (however unlikely that is).
But you can call the window any darn thing you want. If each has unique name, it will open in a new window, so from one web page you can send some links to one window and other links to one or more others windows
Remember that the user might not realize that a new tab or page has opened, especially if they on a smartphone (where the new page might be under the one they're viewing), so if space and situation permits, consider mentioning "... will open in a new tab or window."
The same technique can be useful for internal links. For example, here's a page at my site (non-WA) that shows the user a photo. I don't want them to inadvertently close the photo and leave my site. I do the same thing when linking to a PDF; I'm constantly accidentally leaving sites because I forget I'm in a browser, not a PDF reader.
