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Calling all LJ haxxors

Hey folks: I need to learn how to use an override to force ALL my links — Friends pages, Links pages, and any links within entries — to open in new windows. I thought I could do this by switching to an S1 style (I’m using Magazine) and inserting this code:

GLOBAL_HEAD<= style type="text/css" base target="_blank" /style <=GLOBAL_HEAD as an override, but it's not working. At all. (I took out the brackets so it would display here...) Why do I want to do this? Because my journal is embedded at sararyan.com, and when people navigate within it, I want them to break out of the sararyan.com frame. Otherwise, it looks like all the links from my journal are actually part of sararyan.com, which, obviously, they're totally not. Apologies to those of you for whom this is absolute gibberish. But I hope someone can help me out! Thanks in advance.

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  • librarian
    November 30, 2005 at 2:22 am

    forcing all links to open in new windows makes sense for the reasons you mention, but is really bad from a design and usability perspective. If I read your site and click on three links, then I’m suddenly looking at three new windows. You might do better to either

    1. have a “break out of this frame” link for people
    2. use URL masking so that people see http://www.sararyan.com in the address bar, but they are actually manipulating different pages in your site underneath.
    3. don’t use livejournal for something it’s not really designed to do. Is it possible to have someone make an RSS feed of your LJ and have you embed it in that sararyan.com frame instead? or maybe using a different tool for your blogging that does this more gracefully.

    I respect your right to do whatever you want to do with your site [you can maybe use javascript for example] but opening a bunch of new windows breaks a lot of functionality that people associate with web sites [back buttons, as one example] and people who need stuff opened in new windows can learn how to do that with their browsers [I use command click with safari to open links in new tabs, for exampole] maybe you could do a tutorial on this instead and let your users choose how to do it?

  • thisisnotanlj
    November 30, 2005 at 2:38 am

    all the arguments about how bad new windows are. my quandary is that i like using lj for its ease-of-use, lack of comment spam, etc., but i also like having whatever blog i maintain show up at sararyan.com without requiring extra clicks. so your idea about having the feed display in the iframe instead is intriguing. hmmm.

  • nevikmoore
    November 30, 2005 at 3:18 am

    First, find a sturdy iron kettle. Add a gallon of water, two drops of balsamic vinegar and a teaspoon of olive oil. Boil, then simmer. Then add the following ingredients:

    • head of goat, shorn
    • 8 finely grated spider legs
    • a Spy magazine from 1992
    • Jimmy Kimmel (prepare by straining through sausage machine, alive)
    • a discarded pacemaker from Dick Cheney’s garbage (or a copy of Lynne Cheney’s lesbian romance novel)
    • paprika
    • the head of Boba Fett