The Back Button
Written by Georg Wednesday, 13 January 2010 09:26
Seems I can't help myself blogging back every morning. So yes, again the "back" tag. That's about to haunt the day again. Today about the back button in your browser. Theories of usability are divided.
Some sustain that users worldwide are mature enough not to loose your site from sight once they click an external link out. In simple words for the coder and the designer of web sites: What to do with external links? Code them to open in the parent window or in a new window? The former will pass your site to history once the visitor clicks on that link, because another (external, alien, foreign, not-yours) web site will occupy the very window where you were just cherishing the clicking visitor's arrival and presence. Now you've gotta relay on the visitor's fidelity to 'remember' the importance of returning to your site. And then also on his or her perspicacity with the simple use of that top left browser back button, where the unforgetting user is supposed to punch in order to return to your site, where you actually want him to stay instead of roaming the web at random, ever farther away from your displayed work and business.
Some others are saying: "Let's not give so much confidence to the average user's ability to punch that back button in the browser bar. Let's not assume the casual visitor will much care if he's landing on your site or on some other web site". In fact, thinking from a balanced perspective, what makes your web site stand apart from other sites? In the mind of the web user, I mean. It's more probable that random users will treat your site equally in respect to others. And then you need to "help" them notice your site "more than otherwise" noticed. Therefore it makes sense to mistrust the urge and sometimes capacity of the average users punching their browsers' back buttons only to return back to your beloved web site.
For that matter:
1. Whenever you're about to code an external link out of your web site, then make sure it's targeting a new (_blank) window.
2. Whenever you're about to serve some non-HTML content to the user, such as a PDF file, then do that with a target to a new window again. Why so? Because a PDF will call to open an Adobe application in your browser, or along your browser. That's not just loosing a visitor from your web site alone, but sometimes even hiding the entire browser application beneath the Acrobat from Adobe, which is handling the PDF.
3. On a secondary note, menu links (and especially sub-menus) are nicer when opening in the parent window. Hence not a very inspired idea to outlink to PDFs directly from the main menu of your web site. And even worse to have those PDFs open in the very parent window to replace your site with another application, from Adobe...
If you're familiar with Google Apps, then you'll be amazed to notice how many and how often you land on new windows (or tabs if your browser is set to open tabs instead of windows) whenever you give a click on a top outer link. Like from Gmail to Documents, or to Calendar and so on. Seems that Google understands to take care of the users needs by offering them more than one single option: that named browser back button to punch on.
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