When navigating the Discourse site, I’m often surprised that links open in the current tab. This makes it hard to switch back and forth between the discussion, and links that are referenced in the discussion.
I’m curious to hear what the community thinks.
0 voters
Use Ctrl/Cmd-click if you want new tabs.
See e.g.
for some information why opening links in new tabs should be avoided.
Yeah, we’re not going to change this — it’s something that is best done by the browser at the behest of the user. The way browsers work is that it’s very easy to open “normal” links in a new tab but challenging to open “new tab” links in the same tab.
There is a user setting that allows you to choose to open external links in a new tab, but not for all links (profile → preferences → interface). If you’d want to have such a setting for all links, you’d have to advocate for this upstream at meta.discourse.org.
Brilliant! Okay, I didn’t realize there’s a setting to open External links in a new tab. Thanks!
In my Firefox, at least, you can just click the link with the middle button (the scroll) to open in a new tab. No reason to make this choice for the user.
Every design choice is a choice being made for the user! 
hahaha, yes, if we go full pedantic about it, yes, it is. What I meant is that the user already have the tools to make this specific choice effortlessly on each occasion, there is no need for a new default.