I get asked quite a lot why my links don't open in new windows, and could I please add target="_blank" (or target="new" - which is incorrect) to them? The answer to that is no. I have never used target="_blank" on my site, except when I used popup windows (ewww, I know). And even then I wasn't happy about doing it. Especially now, when I validate to doctypes that don't support the target attribute.
Ok, I do have my Firefox settings set to ignore target="_blank", but why should I have to change my settings because of your site? I don't like being told how I'm going to go to a link. I want to choose for myself whether I am going to open a new window, a new tab, a new browser, or reuse the same page. I want links to follow what I've told my browser I want to happen. Usually, I reuse the same page. However, I never ever have more than one browser window open, and that is how I want it to stay, thank you very much. I can't stand cluttered desktops/taskbars where I don't know which window contains what. At least with tabs I can rename them and order them and whatever else (Firefox extensions FTW!1!).
This behaviour stems from the times of IE6 and other non-tabbed browsers, however is still being used today - people don't want visitors leaving their sites, so they force another browser window to open. On my old computer this was a nightmare - it couldn't cope with more than one instance of IE and opening another (by choice or otherwise) resulted in the whole thing crashing. Likewise, my current computer is getting slower and more dodgy every day, and opening an instance of Firefox/IE/anything takes it quite a while (yes, I have defragmented/taken off spyware/viruses/etc. It's just getting old). That's another reason I only have one FF window open, actually, heh. To those people (who don't want visitors leaving their sites) I say this: if your site is worth visiting, people will go back to it. You don't have to force them to stay on your site. In most cases, they will end up closing your site's window anyway.
So my point (I do have one, honest): please don't use target="_blank". It's not only inaccessible, but it's a nuisance to those of us such as myself (and it's not just me) who dislike our default settings being overridden. Let the user choose how to open links. Like I said, if your site is really worth staying on, people will stay on it. There is no need to force them to do so.
So the first public IE7 beta has come out (source). Of course, I had to download and try it straight away.
...And guess what, I'm disappointed. Why? Because Microsoft haven't fixed half the bugs that IE6 had. I was reorganising this site's CSS earlier to get rid of IE hacks since IE7 doesn't like them (yes, that was the reason for the red text. Sorry if I blinded you) and these are the mistakes I found IE7 still to have:
display: block; without specifying so in the CSS (and likewise for some inline elements)#id element when #id > element was also specified - even when the former was written afterwards. In Firefox/Opera/Safari, it doesn't matter whether you write it as #id element or #id > element - if the former is written after the latter, it will override it (I think? I actually haven't tested it! >.< ).There are more, but I can't be bothered to list them. In short, I had hoped the old peek-a-boo thing would be resolved but it hasn't been, neither have the weird floating problems or width/padding/margin bugs. Blah. Oh, and they (Microsoft) completely ripped off Firefox with their "new features". Tabbed browsing? Live bookmarks? Damn, IE, where have you been?!
/geeky subjects
And now I must go and install a new guestbook on a site I've done for someone because hey guess what, it's being spammed to death. The site's been up for 2 years and only in August did I allow it and my brother's site to be listed on search engines. Now look what happens, spam! Part of the reason why I think this site's been rather lucky in terms of comment/form spam is that it's not indexed by Google or any other major search engine. It's listed, but definitely not indexed (that I'm aware of). Any sub-domains are spammable since they don't have the robots.txt file in their root directories. I did try putting some in, but hostees kept deleting them thinking they were spam or something and anyway it didn't seem to work. The whole disallow / part seemed to make the bots think I meant / of my domain rather than the subdomain and indexed it anyway. So yes, I'm prepared to sacrifice search engine listings for having less spam. Grrrrr. Think I'll go for another installation of Jem's BellaBook. Hopefully blocking some common words should mean stupid porno spammers keep the hell out. Having said that though, they leave "genuine" messages with no specific keywords. Katy blogged about this a while ago - "normal" messages such as:
Hello admin! your site it is so great and useful! I have definitely bookmarked it and will come again! Great work!
...are too similar to genuine ones and are therefore almost impossible to block. ARGH.
Grrrrrr. I officially hate Internet Explorer.
My entire site validates as XHTML 1.1 and works... in all browsers except MSIE6. So I have to keep it at XHTML 1.0 (strict) until Microsoft finally realise they need to update their browser. It might have 93% of the market, but it has nowhere near 93% potential. I have no idea why they don't update it, if they still want to be market leader they have to be the best, right?
Well, they're not... simple as that. The only reason anyone uses IE is cos it's built into Windows. I highly doubt people would use it otherwise.
Aaaanyway. Enough rambling. I'm not that fussed about my coding anyway... No... Well, not really.
*Cough*get firefox*cough*
Hmmmmm did I say that? XD