New Window or New Tab?

[jtracking]

Well now with the new firefox and ie browsers offering tabbed browsing, who is going to figure out a way to make a new tab open when we press CTRL on our keyboard and click a hyperlink at the same time OR when we click on a hyperlink that has in it's HTML code the target="_blank" attribute? Will we find a way to make a new tabbed window open?

I'm wondering.

[davebarnes]

I am confused.
You set your parameters in Firefox and chose whether or not you (the person browsing, not the website owner) get a new window or new tab.

[brandrocker]

It is a common issue for webmasters but I am confused to locate your problem.
Particulary, the question "Who is going to figure out" - here who refers to whom? - the visitor, the webmaster or the browser (IE or FireFox)?

[JohneeMac]

Its the user browser that decides whether a new tab or window that is activated. I cant see there being code produced to decide which. Its all down to the browser.

[DaveSawers]

Just to open out this discussion a little...

I have a database query application that I'm just starting on where I want to use one browser window to display the dialog that queries the database and a separate browser window to display the results. I want to do it this way so that it is easy to see both windows on the screen at the same time and see the results of changing a query without having to switch tabs.

When the user does a different type of query, I want to open the result of that query in a different tab in the data browser so the previous results are not lost and the screen is not cluttered with browser windows.

The look and feel analogy would be like an Excel workbook with tabbed sheets for the data and a VB dialog for the queries.

So I would be really interested to know if there is a way I can temporarily override users' browser setups or alternatively if there's any other way of achieving the described functionality.

[JohneeMac]

Just to open out this discussion a little...

I have a database query application that I'm just starting on where I want to use one browser window to display the dialog that queries the database and a separate browser window to display the results. I want to do it this way so that it is easy to see both windows on the screen at the same time and see the results of changing a query without having to switch tabs.

When the user does a different type of query, I want to open the result of that query in a different tab in the data browser so the previous results are not lost and the screen is not cluttered with browser windows.

The look and feel analogy would be like an Excel workbook with tabbed sheets for the data and a VB dialog for the queries.

So I would be really interested to know if there is a way I can temporarily override users' browser setups or alternatively if there's any other way of achieving the described functionality.

This sounds like an AJAX thing to me, maybe someone with some experience with it can help........

[DaveSawers]

This sounds like an AJAX thing to me, maybe someone with some experience with it can help........

Although the application could be developed using Ajax, the question is whether there is any way for the web page to override browser settings. This is independant of any implementation technology.

[wige]

If you do find a way of making a new page open in a tab vs window, it will probably be a very browser specific feature. Neither Mozilla or Microsoft has published info about how the web designer can decide how new pages should be opened. This seems to be exclusively under the control of the user.

[weegillis]

There may not be a way to override the settings, but like everything else DOM, there is probably a way to find out what the user settings are, and go from there.