Open External Links in New Window

Just wondering,
why would you not do this on a public site? I for one HATE that when I leave the site I am visiting when I am doing research. Having the portal open a new window is, in my opinion, a better approach.

Is there a reason other than personal preference to not enable this on a public portal?

I believe the rationale for this is that these days, browsers allow for opening in new tabs/windows easily at the user's discretion. So forcing links to open in a new window overrides the users control over whether or not to open a link in a new window/tab.

I agree with this, if I want to open something in a new tab, I will right click->open in new tab on the link.

However, it is my experience that many clients are still insistent on this, and so I will do it anyway if they cannot be talked out of it.

Hi the syntax on my plone_javascript was more like :
links[i].setAttribute('target','_blank')
It works fine.
Thanks

I found that the only way to get both Firefox and IE to open links in a new window was to use this:

links[i].setAttribute('target','_new');

Hmmm _blank worked for me for IE6, not sure about IE7 though, since I have no access to a "real" IE7 to try it out (only the hacked standalone from tredosoft.com)

The file portal_skins/plone_ecmascript/plone_javascripts.js does no more exist in Plone 2.1 (or I'm too new to Plone/Zope to figure it out). Actually a number of how-tos and docs seem to require updates to accomodate changes in 2.1.

The function is still in plone_ecmascript, now in mark_special_links.js.

Its fully documented in the source.

I didn't have that line of code in my file. I a line with had everything but the bang "!", so I copied and pasted it under that line (which also was commented out), then uncommented it. The drop-down boxes in my Plone disappeared! I took it out.
beno

you may be using a newer version of plone ---

see comment Posted by Ronnie Stevens at May 30, 2007 - 13:04 below

Hi, thanks for your How-to.

I have followed your how-to but the external link (_blank) doesn't work in the navigation portlet.
I have found that your indications only work on the main frame of the page.

I have also encountered problems in external link of the drop down menu that I have made following how-to instruction in plone.org

If you could help me fix my problem i would be very gratefull.

Thanks

I was able to get this to work.

The issue is that the script mark_special_links.js calls a function, getContentArea, to grab the root element that it will look for and change links in. getContentArea grabs an element with id 'register-content' or failing that, 'content'. So I changed it to grab 'visual-portal-wrapper' which in my version of plone is the outermost div, right inside the body.

getContentArea is defined in portal_skins/plone_ecmascript/register_function.js

I changed it to:

function getContentArea() {
    // returns our content area element
    if (W3CDOM) {
        var node = document.getElementById('visual-portal-wrapper');
        if (!node) {
            node = document.getElementById('content');
        }
        return node;
    }
}

I also had another problem, and that was that it wasn't getting the links that I had made using a <a tal:attributes="href linkvalue" /> type of syntax in zpt -- the reason being that there was whitespace inserted in front of the "http://" and the js is using a linkval.indexOf('http://') == 0 to check for http links. So I added the following line to mark_special_links.js strip out whitespace, right after

var linkval = links[i].getAttribute('href');

linkval = linkval.replace(/\s/g, "");

Hope this helps ya.

I'm using plone 2.5.1, I know that in plone 3 this script is disabled by default because it uses css to check for external links.

In plone 2.5.2 there is documentation in the file mark_special_links.js:
 // set open_links_in_external_window in plone_javascript_variables.js.pt
 // to true if you want external links to be opened in a new
 // window.

So customizing plone_javascript_variables.js.pt is the way to go in this plone-version.

This works great for my regular http:// links, but for some reason, my https:// links continue to open in the same window. Any ideas would be much appreciated. If I'm missing something obvious, sorry to be a bother. Thanks!

If your plone version is similar to mine (plone 2.5), look in mark_special_links.js --

you might change this line

else if ( linkval.indexOf('http:') != 0 )

to

else if ( (linkval.indexOf('http:') != 0) && (linkval.indexOf('https:') != 0) )

this line tests the link is not an http link. If it fails, then it determines that it is an http link, and it goes to the next else branch and runs the link-modifying code.

If you have migrated a site from 2.0.5 to 2.1.x and have customized plone previously, you will need to delete the custom plone_javascript.js for the changes made in mark_special_links.js to work.

Ladies and Gentlemen:
If this item is outdated, what is up-to-date?

Plone 3.X has intergrated the seeting in the Plone Control Panel under Theme.
Plone 3.x: Plone site setup -> Theme