If I want to make sure, my readers finds their way back from a visit somewhere else, I may open them a new window, but a named one. This means that clicking many window opening links on my site, will paint all the off site stuff in the same window.

I’m not using this technique often though, just when I invite my visitors to take a short excursion in the middle of my text.

Lorelle, don’t you contradict yourself a bit here?

In your excellent tutorial “A Tagging Bookmarklet for WordPress and WordPress.com Users”, under “Changing the Tagging Bookmarklet Tag Links” you say about bookmarklet links:

“They can be off-site or on-site (intrasite) links. I personally prefer to keep my visitors on my blog, so I use intrasite links.”

Yes, you do for some strange reason.
Your writing is good enough, that I’m coming back time and again, despite the fact, that I’m visiting others as well

Ha. (Speaking as a programmer) all software has to do *something* automatically. What else is it going to do, sit there and do nothing? (Plenty of vaporware does that too, I suppose.)

There are always features of any software program that someone somewhere hates. You can then argue, well make the features customizable, and sure, that’s very nice. But here’s the trick. Let’s say I make the links “dead” (that is, mindlessly open where they are). Some people with certain browsers are trapped with this behavior because they do not have the option to change it. OK, so let’s say I make the links open somewhere else to resolve that. Now I’ll have the group of people who can’t control their tabs or new windows who don’t want this behavior coming after me.

Heh.

I hate multiple browser windows. If I want to open something separately, I will press the command key and open a new tab. I am the user. Let ME make that decision.

Another BIG turn off that unfortunately I find everywhere: Links that open PDFs without any warning.
It really angers me to click on a link to have to wait for the PDF plugin to start, download a document, etc. Every link to a PDF or other downloadable file should have a label that clearly indicates so.

The reason I have links open in a new window is because that’s the way I like to explore the web. I appreciate it when a website does that for me. Many times a link will lead to another link and that to another. I would much rather have to close a few windows and be able to immediately go back to the original site if I want to look at something. I think most normal blog readers would agree with me.

For serious power Internet users, many of us now have mice with a thumb button. A click of the thumb button takes you back or forward from a web page with absolutely no effort. I can’t live without mine.