geoaching.com hijacks ctrl-clicking a link

[+barefootguru]

It seems to be a recent change, that when ctrl-clicking a link on a cache page (e.g. to geocheck.org), instead of opening the link in a new tab like every other website, geocaching.com instead displays a warning about it being an external link.  If you OK that warning, the cache page is replaced by the external link, rather than opening a new tab.

You can work around it by using the mouse to open the link in a new tab, but it's pretty annoying.

 

Safari 15.4 on macOS.

[+MartyBartfast]

See here:
 

 

[+Valentijn77]

Even if you accept that showing a warning is acceptable, it should still respect the ctrl-click and open the link an new tab.

[+Valentijn77]

As mentioned in the (closed) topic 

The external link warning "Don't show again" checkbox doesn't work.  Even after choosing that, the popup keeps coming up.

On all links it seems, also on those that are supposed to be accepted like geocheck.

Cookies are enabled, I have like 20 or 30 cookies on geocaching.com. I hope they don't exceed the maximum size of the cookie header causing some of them to be ignored....

[+Valentijn77]

Hi,

 

Would it be an option to make the "Don't show again" checkbox a setting on the user profile?

That would mean users only have to set it once and forget about it.

The current popup keeps popping up on new devices, but also the "don't show again" checkbox doesn't work for everyone,

See 

Relying on cookies might be or appears to be not 100% reliable.

 

Valentijn

 

[geoawareUSA9]

Merging duplicate posts (and a related topic).

 

@Valentijn77, two notes:

 

First, the closure of a forum topic is not an indication that Groundspeak engineers have ceased working on an issue raised therein.

 

Second, in the future, please refrain from creating multiple posts on the exact same topic.

[+niraD]

1 hour ago, geoawareUSA9 said:

First, the closure of a forum topic is not an indication that Groundspeak engineers have ceased working on an issue raised therein.

It certainly comes across as an indication that Groundspeak as a whole no longer wants to hear about the issue(s) raised therein. In that case, it's hard to imagine that Groundspeak engineers are investing much effort in said issue(s).

[geoawareUSA9]

On 3/20/2023 at 1:02 PM, niraD said:

On 3/20/2023 at 11:13 AM, geoawareUSA9 said:

First, the closure of a forum topic is not an indication that Groundspeak engineers have ceased working on an issue raised therein.

It certainly comes across as an indication that Groundspeak as a whole no longer wants to hear about the issue(s) raised therein. In that case, it's hard to imagine that Groundspeak engineers are investing much effort in said issue(s).

 

Thank you for your input.

 

I'll leave it to @Bl4ckH4wkGER or another Lackey to clarify whether Groundspeak engineers use the status of a particular forum post to signify the priority of a given issue.

 

(As a forum moderator, I can certainly verify that I've never been told that anything I do to close or merge threads has any affect on what the engineers are up to. But, again, that's not my department, so I can't and won't speak for Groundspeak on that.)

 

Meanwhile, let's please return to the topic at hand, which is about external links.

Edited March 22, 2023 by geoawareUSA9

[+terratin]

Bringing this up again, because it's super annoying. I click on a link in a cache listing for further info, and the link ONLY opens in the same browser tab. This is so not done in 2023. Why?

[+Pontiac_CZ]

Until GS fixes this, you might want to click the external link with middle mouse button to open it in a new tab. So far works for me on Windows in Firefox and Chrome.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Pontiac_CZ

[+thebruce0]

Or the more tedious right-click and open-in-new-tab

[+terratin]

2 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

Or the more tedious right-click and open-in-new-tab

I don't have a mouse, thus no middle click. And when I do right-click I don't get the choice to open a link in a new tab unfortunately.

[+thebruce0]

Oh then it's one of the link-but-not-a-link elements that use browser events rather than standard link actions?

What listing, what link, and what browser/platform?

[+Rampensau]

These are normal links (<a href="...">) in the listings, the left (not middle or right) click seems to be 'hijacked' by JavaScript. It also affects the actually allowed external urls. 

[+terratin]

10 hours ago, Rampensau said:

These are normal links (<a href="...">) in the listings, the left (not middle or right) click seems to be 'hijacked' by JavaScript. It also affects the actually allowed external urls. 

Yes, this.

[+thebruce0]

Oh, you brought it up again; I misread that as a new issue, not the same prior issue.

How do you right click without a mouse? If you don't have a mouse, are you on touch screen? Trackball? Tap and hold doesn't allow you to open the link in a new tab/window?

Even so, the right click shouldn't be script-hijacked. I haven't had any problems with in-description links on the website... left-clicking links in the description is just a pain anyway because 99% of the time I don't want to navigate away from the listing in that same tab

[+terratin]

16 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

Oh, you brought it up again; I misread that as a new issue, not the same prior issue.

How do you right click without a mouse? If you don't have a mouse, are you on touch screen? Trackball? Tap and hold doesn't allow you to open the link in a new tab/window?

Even so, the right click shouldn't be script-hijacked. I haven't had any problems with in-description links on the website... left-clicking links in the description is just a pain anyway because 99% of the time I don't want to navigate away from the listing in that same tab

Touch pad, which has a right and left click area, but not a middle click (maybe windows has a special setting for that). But yeah, right click should totally not be hijacked and I don't want to stay in the same tab.

[+thebruce0]

2 hours ago, terratin said:

Touch pad, which has a right and left click area, but not a middle click

It could be possible, though I haven't (yet) looked at the source scripts to verify, that they're hijacking any and all touch events - touch events in javascript are handled differently than mouse clicks which could explain why mouse right clicking works and seems the touch equivalent of right click doesn't (on a phone screen it's typically a two-finger tap).  Does touch and hold work (or do anything differently for you) or is that blocked as well?

[+Goldenwattle]

On 8/2/2023 at 12:42 AM, thebruce0 said:

Or the more tedious right-click and open-in-new-tab

That's what I was about to suggest. It's what I do, and so I didn't know there was a problem, as that works.

[+terratin]

21 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

It could be possible, though I haven't (yet) looked at the source scripts to verify, that they're hijacking any and all touch events - touch events in javascript are handled differently than mouse clicks which could explain why mouse right clicking works and seems the touch equivalent of right click doesn't (on a phone screen it's typically a two-finger tap).  Does touch and hold work (or do anything differently for you) or is that blocked as well?

It's also blocked, unfortunately. Fortunately I can right-click when sending EarthCache answers, but I can't open an external link in a cache description through this. My thought is that it might be due to the 'do you really, really want to enter the evil world of the internet and leave gc.com? click here..."thingy, which obviously is not present when wanting to send someone a message.

Edited August 4, 2023 by terratin

[+niraD]

2 hours ago, terratin said:

It's also blocked, unfortunately. Fortunately I can right-click when sending EarthCache answers, but I can't open an external link in a cache description through this. My thought is that it might be due to the 'do you really, really want to enter the evil world of the internet and leave gc.com? click here..."thingy, which obviously is not present when wanting to send someone a message.

Exactly. Groundspeak's "Oh, no! You clicked a link!" alert is breaking normal browser functionality for handling links. It's been that way for years.