Middle click on link, opens new tab, go back to original tab, middle click on link again opens movey scrolly thing
Oh, I missed that part. You mean middle clicking on the same link twice. OK, I’m sorry, I can repro that and we’ll see about fixing it.
Not totally convinced that middle clicking things twice is all that common, but indeed some kind of bug.
Or a different link on the original tab, a much more common occurrence I’m sure even you would agree. The second time onwards it’s just dead. exactly the same as how it happens in Firefox. Links from the BBS are broken.
Wouldn’t it be more elegant to just use simple, standard links? So that both browsers and servers can innovate without breaking each other?
Simpler is more often better than not.
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I’d have thought so…
My issue is that when I command-click with my MacBook on a link like the one you just posted (using Firefox), what should happen is that the link opens in the background, in a new tab. What does happen is that the link opens in a new tab, and switches focus to that tab. It doesn’t happen with page functions like “Reply as new topic,” but it does happen with links posted in comments, and it’s extremely irritating because it breaks a basic function that I have to remember to work around (two-finger tap my track pad to bring up the contextual menu, select “open in new tab”). And this is true only of the BBS, not of the blog itself.
No, but seriously @codinghorror, what does discourse do to links to stop them working?
Well, from my perspective, the question is what does Firefox do to stop links from opening. (middle clicking repeatedly is truly a bug, though.)
The alternative is to rewrite all links as t.co type URL shorteners, so that we can track clicks, which I haaaate.
Firefox does nothing. Links work on every other site, and the behavior described here is ONLY applicable to this site. From my perspective, I again have two questions:
- What does Discourse do to links to stop them working as they do everywhere else
- Why, exactly, are you tracking my clicks? Isn’t that kinda against a lot of what boingboing stands for?
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We’re tracking the number of times a link was clicked so we can show counts. This is an important signifier. Consider a short post with a link that nobody clicks, versus a post with a link that was clicked a few thousand times – which post is more important?
The “works on every browser including IE 4.0” way to do this is to replace all the URLs with t.co URL shorteners or the like. The (severe) downside is that you can never really tell where a link is going, since they all look like t.co or goo.gl links.
It’s unfortunate that Firefox is so regressive in this area, we’ll see what we can do. It would be easier to prioritize if other browsers had the same problems Firefox does.
I used to read a forum where one day the owner decided to add an affiliate revenue program. Outbound links to retailers such as Amazon or E-Bay, among others, would be rewritten to include the owner’s affiliate code, giving him a small cut of any sales made after following a link.
The company that sold him the code to do this had a pretty slick JavaScript trick - links wouldn’t be rewritten until they were clicked on. So users could edit their posts or hover over the link and see nothing different, but when an onclick event was detected the link was rewritten.
It seems like you could do something similar to avoid the downsides of link redirection and extend the browser base of Discourse.
Whoa there buckaroo! I think you need to expand on this a bit. What are you tracking? What information is being held and by whom and where? Are IP addresses being logged? Are you collecting clicks per user? Be open.
Also are you really advocating for an internet of the 90s where every page had these all over the place? 
For wanting to know how and why I’m being tracked?
I think it’s just so they can put those little numbers next to the links in posts. Which I don’t really see the point of, but I don’t think it’s nefarious.
But do you know? This is supposed to be an open platform, and it is being used by a community of tech-savvy people who are up in arms about privacy and snooping in just about every other aspect of internet usage.
I think there is a duty for the providers of discourse to be as open about the hows and whys and whats of tracking, not just to pat us on the head and say “It’s ok, nothing for you little people to be worried about, you run along now”
Yo are on teh internets dude. What makes you think you are special? Dictionary.com alone will place 100 tracking cookies if you visit their site. Nothing you are doing is private.
Now you will say that you have higher expectations from Boing Boing. Wow, suddenly your argument becomes academic and silly.
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I think a site that kicks up a huge amount of fuss about other companies and organisations tracking and monitoring internet users has a duty to be completely transparent about their own use of such technologies. Why is this wrong of me?
Oh my God, It’s Monday. I am late for work!
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Oh, I think some of my comments have been moderated. That would explain why . . .
Also, damn, it means you win.
I got no right to complain ('cause I code, so I should just go look) but isn’t your response to Captain Pedge pretty disingenuous? I mean, it seemed like an honest inquiry to me; saying you see no alternatives does not answer the question at all, but does make it clear that you know what the answer is.
