What will it take to kill target="_blank" once and for all?

pregier

Sorry if this gets posted too often or if my experience is too far from the mainstream. I've done some searching, but the relevant terms are generic and overloaded, and most serious discussion on the topic seems to be outdated.

Vivaldi is starting to freeze on me every few days, seemingly because I have too many tabs, almost none of which I opened voluntarily. I try to clean up manually, but it's very time consuming because nearly zero of these tabs were spawned with my intent or consent.

I've tried multiple same-tab extensions, and as the years go by they seem to work less and less; I reinstall them and they work for a few days, and before I know it the toxic UIs are spawning new tabs again. One of my old favorites now seems to require that every page be reloaded before every click to work. Every aggregator and search engine uses a different scheme (when they even have one) for disabling new tabs for every click, and many require creating new junk accounts that now must be managed just to set a preference that will likely revert unpredictably should the available user prefs ever change in any way.

What would it take for target="_blank" to become a first-class permission, with the option to deny by default, like location tracking, notifications, and other toxic UX designs that are designed to defeat the user's intentions? Will it have to come from upstream Chrome, or could Vivaldi eventually make new tabs a privilege reserved only for websites that earn it?

If none of the above are compelling to anyone but me, I'll add one last reason Vivaldi should have the (possibly unique) ability to force links to remain in the originating tab: WEB PANELS! Well over half of my garbage tabs were actually spawned by web panels, which kind of defeats the purpose of trying to contain a live feed or dynamic page in the panel in the first place. Why have this feature at all if web designers see it as something they have to defeat with their code, with no incentive to the contrary?

I don't want to be unappreciative of the people who work hard to maintain the addons that try to solve the problem, or of any suggestions for better addons to use instead of the ones that no longer work, but the question remains: why do I seem to be the only one to believe that the target="_blank" arms race has as of 2023 created more problems than it's solved and can only be truly be resolved by the browser itself?

DoctorG

@pregier The bug is known and as i know a fix is in progress.

pregier

...wait, what? You mean just the freezing itself?

That's great and I applaud the Vivaldi devs for working so hard to compensate for everyone else's poor judgment, but it still seems like a losing battle. I still think their job would be a lot easier if we had the option of not constantly opening new tabs we don't want just so the browser can manage them for no reason.

pregier

@Pathduck I'm not quite sure why this was moved to Desktop. Vivaldi on Android bleeds tabs just as quickly as it does on Linux, with even fewer mitigations available on Android.

pregier

Thanks, @Pathduck. I think this is a better match.

Since I wandered too much in my OP, here is the feature I am requesting. Or at least, someone please tell me either why it can't be done or what a better way would be. Just like Vivaldi/Chromium ask you the first time a site asks for geolocation data:

If a site tries to direct a user interaction to a new tab (target="_blank", I think, but really any time a website would open a new tab for any reason other than the user explicitly opening a new tab or using a modifier key) Vivaldi should apply the same allow/ask/deny logic that other intrusive web designs get:

If a user has specified "deny" by default and/or for this site, links get opened in the current tab (or web panel!).
If a user has specified "ask" by default and/or for this site, instead open it in the current tab (or web panel!) and offer an unobtrusive address bar message requesting something like "This site is requesting to open links in new tabs. Allow?"
If a user has specified "allow" by default and/or for this site, then target="_blank" is honored the way it is now.

Sorry I confused my feature request with too many reasons. I still think that without some version of this feature, web panels are doomed since they currently incentivize web designers to break out into your main tab list.

In short, new tabs are the new popups. Anyone here old enough to remember what the web was like in 2002 will remember why popups, which started out as a useful feature, ended up a malignant plague and ultimately had to be all but abolished at the browser level. Now the same thing is happening with tabs.

Pesala

@pregier If I am not mistaken, one can already open links in the current tab with Right-click, Open Link.

Vote for the existing request Option to Always Reuse Active Tab.

pregier

Wow; thanks @Pesala. I didn't know that was what this menu item did, and I'm pleasantly surprised to see it works in web panels too. I'll definitely vote for the option to make this default behavior.

barbudo2005

@pregier

Use the extension Link Controller:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-controller/piphpieodkchnlmjjefbbniabeikafha

If you want all links in a site open in the same tab use TAB , CURRENT.

If you want all links in all sites open in the same tab use GLOBAL , CURRENT.

pregier

@barbudo2005 this addon doesn't seem to work for me with Google News in a web panel even after I give it permission (!?!) to read and modify my data on all sites.

In 2016 when this exploit was new, addons were enough. Now it seems the addons have a much harder time keeping up, especially with Vivaldi's fancy features in the mix.

DoctorG

@pregier Such issue is fixed in 6.1.3035.3 Snapshot. No crash anymore.