[Rd] CRAN website: link targets

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005, Gregor GORJANC wrote:

> Hello R-masters!

This is R-devel, not the feedback page for CRAN/www.r-project.org.

> R

R webpages do not AFAICS.  www.r-project.org may, but that is not R.

>  and CRAN webpages use HTML frames for layout. Links to files such as PDF 
> are therefore opened within frame. However, with PDFs this can be distracting

That is a function of your browser settings, not part of the WWW standard.
Other settings open files in the assigned PDF reader.

> if you have a small monitor, since left frame can be small for viewing PDFs 
> with bookmark toolbar in the left in Acrobat Reader. It isn't such a bug 
> problem with others i.e. (K)Ghostview etc, but it can be still small to look 
> at.
>
> I suggest to add targets to all links to PDF files. If one wants to see that 
> link will be opened in new frame/tab then target="_blank" should used, 
> otherwise target="_top" will cause that PDF will be opened "over all frames" 
> of current website.

A decent browser will allow you the choice of opening in the frame, in a 
new tab/window or in the application (here the PDF reader).  If yours does 
not, try a better browser (e.g. Firefox).


What I do think is desirable is for *off-site* HTML links (e.g. for the 
mailing lists) to use target="_top".  That is certainly what my O'Reilly 
HTML book recommends.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595