Stop Leaving My Site, Drupal!

There's something else too - firefox and opera both have settings which will allow their users to *over-ride* the setting which the web developer chooses. In other words, if the users don't like new tabs being opened for external links, they can just set up their browser to never open a new tab unless they middle-mouse click the link. So really, the web developer can set-it up any way he likes, but the user still has ultimate control (unless they're using IE, in which case any loss of control serves them right).

> how does a module become core, anyway?
> Is there some kind of standing Drupal Association committee

Yes, I think the core group of devs probably agree on a development path through reasoned debate, perhaps guided by Dries Buytaert. But remember, Drupal is a *framework*, which is why it doesn't have much built-in functionality. The ethos is to build hooks into that framework to allow modular functions, rather than build it right in and bloat the core.

> but I had promised to not "argue" the matter

Yes, don't argue with people who you may rely on to help you.
Be more humble and not quite so effervescent until everyone knows you better.

What do you mean, no, assumptions are not always made??

Of course they're always made!

Things are the way they are because someone somewhere made the assumption that the way things are are best for someone else somewhere else!

As for my "perpetual whining"...I don't think you're clear-headed enough to recognize a whine from a complaint, as evidenced by your inability to see that assumptions are always made. You're actually not very self-aware. So I should very much wonder at your ability to recoignize another's faults.

But then you're not the kind of customer I want, are you?

Let's see...people complain about advertising, DHTML, new windows, color schemes, long sentences...at the end of the day, all I can do is shrug. Really, you can't please everyone, so you might as well first please yourself.

So what if there's a new window???

It's not like an XXX cropophilia/zoophilia/pedophilia ad that pops up!

Just a Totoz emoticon index, for example, in the chat module Tribune. A "for more smileys, click here" kinda text string is automatically inserted...but when the link is clicked, they leave my site!

That actually makes more sense, that a visitor should leave my site??

I'm sorry, but I can't comprehend any visitor getting mad because a link s/he's clicked opens up in a new window. I just don't see how it could ruin their experience of my site.

I do know that their leaving my site literally negates their experience of my site, though. Outta "site" outta mind, you understand.

I'm really inclined to respectfully ignore this "best practice" dictum, but I'm curious: why should anyone be upset about another window that opens up?

Are people really that touchy? Do they really feel like someone's taking over their computer when a new window pops up? Maybe this attitude is just a hold-over from the old-timers, you know, the sort who bemoan "Eternal September" and JavaScript and advertising on a site and so on and so forth. Do a lot of people really care about this issue? I don't mean every single link on a site opening up in its own window, of course -- but it seems "logical" that a link to another site should open up in its own window. It almost feels more "elegant" to do so, actually.

I dunno...anyone want to explain the no-new-windows mindset to me? I won't respond and argue -- I won't respond at all; I just want to try to imagine why anyone should be offended by a new window for an external site.

Thanks.

It so happens I agree with your point about new windows. And I am also predominately a user like yourself, rather than a coder, of Drupal. But frankly, you are the one who needs telling off severely here. Your posts usually start out (as someone else mentioned) with an attack or an insult. You lambast people supplying you with software for free because you think the docs are inadequate. But hey, why should that bother you? ARE YOU TAKING YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY??? Surely, if expecting not to have time wasted is defined by you as taking yourself too seriously, then you shouldn't mind spending extra time puzzling out the docs, should you? While you're at it, please rewrite them to you own high standards. Why should the guys who GAVE you free software do it for you? Wake up and take a good close look at yourself. And please be more polite to the people who are donating their time to provide you with something useful. Either that or shut up and go pay x thousand dollars for Microsoft Sharepoint. Then you can complain all you like. Though I wonder if you'd get as many helpful replies as people have given you here?

Don't you think it's about time you just stopped arguing David? There is an argument here one which you have created and escalated.

Definition:
Argue: to contend or disagree in words : dispute

Definition:
Argument: the act or process of arguing

I will go out on a limb here and suggest that you are in fact a fitness trainer as your user name implies. What if a software engineer came to your place of work and started telling you that the way you explain how to do Pilates SUCKED!!!?!!!. That the documents you send your students home with were "Absolutely Horrible"!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Because from an engineering standpoint none of your documentation has any scientific data, formal proofs, charts, graphs, definitions of the communication protocols used by the nerves to transfer information to the muscles, etc... That you should do it a different way because of xyz but with no real clue as to why you are doing things the way you are because he is not a fitness trainer. You would be upset and rightly so.

Now lets understand that you have done just this. This, for many people here, is there online place of work. You have come running in as a "FITNESS TRAINER"!!!!!!! claiming that the way things are done around here are suck and that it should be done your way. The better method would have been to come here and ask "Why are things being done this way?". Based on you being a fitness trainer you have valid no 'argument' for jumping up and down and screaming "I want it done like this!", other than that is the way you want it.

Though the saying goes "The customer is always right", make no mistake about it you are nobody's customer here. I seem to have missed where you "simply suggested that web standards exist for a reason". It seems to me that virtually all the people responding to you here have been trying to make that point but that you have not heard it. Nowhere have I seen you agree with it or even allude to it.

Failing to see how asking a simple question can be interpreted as an attack.

I don't have time to evaluate & learn a bunch of products. So when I look at something, my first question is "is this going to be a pain". If I can't quickly find clear instructions, I will likely move on. If they're there, I am more likely to download, install, evaluate, and become a user. I can even see how someone might cop an attitude and say "this is for someone else, they don't want me as a user" when confronted with poor docs.

For the record, I'll give the official Drupal documentation 3.5 of 5 stars. It got me started after a little puzzlement, but then I have a three-digit IQ.

Your point is that we have it easy these days compared to your time.

But that means nothing at all.

Comparing how you had it to how it is today is missing our point.

There's no argument per se. You folks simply aren't paying attention to what I'm saying.

I'm a newbie. I'm not a professional developer like you.

I trust documentation. Or did, until I came to Drupal.

And yet you're suggesting things like "why don't you patch the modules"...hello???

Honestly, I think there is a very unfortunate cognitive dissonance at work in the wider culture that's demonstrated here, due in large part to TV and, now, that machine-stupid Google mindset of "keyword scanning"...I don't think you people actually "read" so much as scan, and then (mis-) interpret based on keywords and phrases.

That's why there's the semblance of an "argument" here...'cause I'm talking apples and y'all hear "round fruit" and answer with oranges!

The way I look at the docs is at least we have them! When I started Drupal (4.6) it was mostly by the seat of the pants a lot of reading and a LOT of questions - and Drupal was one of my first ventures to a website. I learned because of the few docs we had then. It was soon that I thought "Why are these newbies complaining, it's easy to put the tables in the database!". So I'm grateful for what we have today. It's a plethora of information if you sit and read it. It does help to know the 'buzzwords' in Drupal though. It took me a long time to grasp the concept of a node. But when I did it was like a door opening.

As to a website opening windows when you click a hyperlink, I prefer they do that. If not, I'll do it on my own. I prefer to read the content I'm looking at then go look at the ancillary information. I've found most links take you to large amounts of information that only are vaguely relevant to what you were reading in the first place. I'm not speaking of Drupal here, but most other sites I go to. I use the external-links module mentioned about 400 levels up in this thread and like it. It provides the same icon that Wikipedia does for outside site links. A lot of times on some of the sites, when they do open external sites in the same window, going back sometimes looses the place you were when you clicked the link.

To help with my understanding and ongoing needs/desires, I created a Google Custom Search Engine that I use. Anytime I run across something for Drupal with good info, I add it to the list (currently about 24 sites).

Just my thoughts.
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