Open off-site links in new tabs

What: I’d like to see off-site links open in a new tab.

Why: I had a reader complain because he clicked a link, closed the new page after reading and didn’t realize he was also closing the Medium article.

Why Not: Many usability people say not to do this because “the user should be in control”.

Why Anyway: Many of these arguments were made before the ubiquity of tabbed browsing; opening a new tab is much less “annoying” than opening a new window. Not to mention, the vast majority of web users don’t know and don’t care how to explicitly open a link in a new window/tab, they just want to read articles and not lose what they’re reading. Note that Twitter and Facebook both open off-site links in new tabs by default. I think it builds loyalty to a platform when users can have a browser tab always open and pointed to that platform, no matter what links they’ve clicked on.