Single Window & Blank Tab

[NeXTLoop]

A couple of Camino inspired requests:

1. It would be awesome to have a "Single Window Mode" where links that would normally open in a new window are forced to open in the current one.

2. It would be nice to be able to create new tabs that are blank, rather than loading the home page. Although I want the home page to load when the program is opened, I hate have to stop the home page from loading every time I create a new tab.

Other than that, OW rocks.... and always has.

[Handycam]

I concur.

Especially an option to force "target=_blank" links (I hate those) to open in a new tab in the existing window, rather than create a new window.

[Len Case]

There is an experimental hidden default (the mis-named OWOpenNewFramesInTabs) which should catch both window.open and target=_blank and make new tabs instead.
defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5 OWOpenNewFramesInTabs -bool true

This is not a public feature yet since all the bugs haven't been worked out. For instance it bypasses the popup-trap (if you use that option) and it may have other problems.

[NeXTLoop]

Thanks Len. What about being able to set new tabs to open as blank? I like having the home page open when a new window is created (as it does when the program is launched) but hate it when a new tab is created.

[mbklein]

Thanks Len. What about being able to set new tabs to open as blank? I like having the home page open when a new window is created (as it does when the program is launched) but hate it when a new tab is created.

Ditto that.

[mk2]

Really? I actually hate that Safari opens new tabs blank and makes me hit Cmd-Shfit-H to go home.

[superjoppe]

Ditto that.
I ditto that too.

[- - e r i k - -]

Ditto that.
Ditto x3

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[Stormchild]

There is an experimental hidden default (the mis-named OWOpenNewFramesInTabs) which should catch both window.open and target=_blank and make new tabs instead.
defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5 OWOpenNewFramesInTabs -bool true

This is not a public feature yet since all the bugs haven't been worked out. For instance it bypasses the popup-trap (if you use that option) and it may have other problems.

Is there a similar feature that will do this, but force target="_blank" links to simply open in the current tab? What I'm trying to put a stop to is getting a new anything (window or tab) in a situation where I expected the link to open in the current tab. Having these links open in a new tab instead of a new window is really not much better.

I also only want this to affect normal anchor tags that use target="_blank", not JavaScript window.open() ones, because the latter are almost never used for regular links, but instead for pop-up windows relevant to the current page (like popping up enlarged versions of images, or a little panel of info, or whatever else). Whether it's a wise decision to use a JS pop-up for a given website feature is another matter (and is in any case one that can already be handled by the existing pop-up blocking and JavaScript rules on a per-site basis), but it is certainly possible and occasionally happens that a pop-up window serves a useful purpose. We should be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater here.

Ideally it would be possible to specify on a per-site basis whether to force target="_blank" links to open in the current tab. For the most part, that's how I want all of those to work, but on the off chance that a particular site actually has a legitimate reason for creating a new window in this way (i.e. target="_blank"), it would still be nice to be able to allow it for certain sites.

[Forrest]

Stormchild, there's no way to do what you're asking, right now. You may want to search the forum a bit as there's some other discussion about this and some of the other things you've been asking.

[Stormchild]

Stormchild, there's no way to do what you're asking, right now. You may want to search the forum a bit as there's some other discussion about this and some of the other things you've been asking.

Do you work for Omni, or is that just a guess? What technical hurdle stands in the way of simply opening target="_blank" links in the current tab instead of opening a new tab or window?

[Bob Williams]

Do you work for Omni, or is that just a guess? What technical hurdle stands in the way of simply opening target="_blank" links in the current tab instead of opening a new tab or window?

I don't believe he meant to say that there were technical barriers. Sure, OW's code can be modified to support these features (and I think that would be great), but, the current version does not have these features. That's all.

[Stormchild]

I don't believe he meant to say that there were technical barriers. Sure, OW's code can be modified to support these features (and I think that would be great), but, the current version does not have these features. That's all.

Oops, I misread, my mistake! I misinterpreted "do what you're asking" as "implement that feature" instead of the (in retrospect) more obvious meaning: "that feature doesn't exist yet."

Perhaps my first post wasn't worded very clearly; I realize it doesn't do that yet, and was just asking if it could be added. Since I'm relatively new to the forum (although not to OmniWeb or their other fine products), I probably missed some other similar discussion about this. I'll try to get caught up on what's already been discussed. Thanks!

[Forrest]

Yep. One other thing to note is that, for official feature requests and bug reports, use the Feedback option within OW. Then they actually read everything. Here you're basically posting to OW users though the Omni bees frequent here regularly.

So when I read your message, I was thinking you were posting to the users and not just to the employees.