galaxy-hub
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galaxyproject
Do we need to produce a plain/bare version of every page?
On the current .eu site, every news/event post produces both the normal view in an index.html and a content-only version in a plain.html. From what I've gathered, it seems the main reason for the plain versions are so that when people on usegalaxy.eu click a link in the middle pane, they see the page without the navbar, which would look weird inside of Galaxy.
Re-implementing this wouldn't be trivial, but I'll bet we could do it. My larger concern is about doubling the number of pages in the site and the resources that could take (we're already up against the build memory limit).
So I'm wondering if it would be good enough to add a target="_blank" to those links so they just open in a new tab? Before I embark on re-implementing this I wanted to take a quick temperature check.
CC @bgruening @beatrizserrano
target=blank was a mistake that never should have been invented. If I wanted it in a new tab, I would've chosen that with right clic k or ctrl-click. We did this to intentionally keep people on the galaxy page.
By default, links in HTML are opened in your current tab and this is usually helpful. After all, as a web page owner, you want people to stay on your web page and not get distracted by too many open tabs or other web pages. People’s attention is limited which is why you want them to focus on your content. Besides, links which open in a new tab are also bad for accessibility if you don’t provide hints and ARIA attributes.
You could hide the header with js/css maybe, it would be cheaper than doing multiple pages. We send a cache busting key with the page load that you could use to check.
@hexylena Hmm okay, this is good to know, thanks for sharing your preference. I agree that looking into doing this with JS/CSS would be good. Duplicating every page could be expensive.
(It's an opinion, "they're like ___, everyone's got one", y'all can feel free to reject it, I won't be hurt.)
I know there's a lot of less computer literate folks that don't know how to open-in-new-tab, and some folks feel we should cater to them. The counterpoint to that is, if they're less technically literate, then they're potentially overwhelmed by endless new tabs automatically opening, so, keeping them on the same site so they don't get distracted or confused is helpful.
I don't even think the general argument for/against target="_blank" is that relevant here. For internal links within the Hub, clearly it'd be nicer for people to be able to browse the site within the Galaxy middle pane, instead of getting kicked out to a separate tab. It's just a little tricky to do, so the question is how much you want it. And for the EU subsite, it's about the preference of the EU people, not me, so that's all I'm trying to figure out. I'll look into the JS solution.