I'm not sure if others feel the same way, but whenever I look up a word in, say, nciku, I'd like it if the entry could open in a new browser tab, not open in the same tab other characters/words I have previously looked up. It gets frustrating when skritter keeps redirecting browser pages I want to keep open.

It's interesting to me how different everyone's preferences are. I have to say I feel the exact opposite, I like having them all open in the same tab.

Good luck to the skritter team keeping everyone happy!

How do others feel about this? I'd love to hear preferences; we'll go with majority rules, with no alternate choices.

I like the way it is now.

If I want to review, I can hit back on the page. If I'm just looking for a specific word, I can hit the drop down next to the back button and pick it from the list.

Please don't change it. I don't want to spend my time closing a bunch of tabs.

New windows/tabs are evil. If you want to open something on a new tab thats what the right click button is for!

New tab is my vote. I don't like losing my place in my Practice window because there's some "spin-up" time when you leave it.

To be clear, the choice is between having one new tab per dictionary, with new lookups overwriting that extra tab, or having each dictionary lookup open in a separate tab. So if I did 5 lookups, I'd either have practice page + 1 extra tab with the 5 lookups in its history, or practice page + 5 extra tabs.

I certainly like it as it is - just one extra tab for dictionary lookups, more would be inefficients, as Thomas writes.

I much prefer it as it is now - all lookups in the same dictionary tab.

I like keeping things open for later reference, and hitting ctrl+w repeatedly to close multiple tabs takes me maximum an extra half a second, so to me the system right now is a bit annoying. If you are considering changing the look-up according to majority rule, perhaps it could be made a front page poll? (Although, it seems like I'm pretty much alone with my preferences.)

I also like it the way it is now.
At the moment, if you want new tabs it's easily done with a right click.

programming a setting and loading a target="$var" shouldn't be too hard ^.^

@helixness: The Skritter gods frown upon creating a profusion of options.

James

maybe we should have a page with userscripts...

cbjartli, try middle-clicking or ctrl+clicking on the "Lookup" link. That should create the new tabs the way you want.

As far as preferences, there's much to be said about avoiding them. At the danger of linking to 37signals:

http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/getting_real_the_problem_with_preferences_interface_design_and_the_customer_experience.php

I had a better article on this that I can't find now.

Basically the argument goes like this: when you offer a preference, you're making the user decide what good design should be about a use of your application that initially she knows nothing about, in a menu where she's already being confused with your other preferences, and in which she probably wants the default anyway, all the while making more work for yourself, and if you don't fight hard to keep extra preferences out, you will end up with the classic Programmer UI, which looks like this:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/this-is-what-happens-when-you-let-developers-create-ui.html

@nick those links are awesome, thanks! I will send them on to some coworkers.

Ah, yeah, I should have thought about that. I've been using a cheap Hanbao-tablet without a middle mouse button with Skritter. I should have checked if there was a keyboard shortcut I could've used. Heh. Sorry for complaining about nothing ;)

Anyway, I really love how easy it is to communicate with you about features/the design of the service. I don't think many companies can pride themselves on that kind of flexibility.

I also like the way it is now. Thanks.

As they're starting to say these days in web startup circles, support is next to godliness. Anyway, it's easy with users as intelligent as y'all. Thanks!

I think W3C standards state that target="_blank" is not appreciated anyways.

I definitely prefer opening multiple new tabs.

New words seem to get added in batches, and that's when I most want to spin up several nciku pages simultaneously in the background.

From Shanghai, the nciku pages take a long time to complete loading - typically 15-25 seconds. My pace in Skritter is about 10 seconds per character, so I lose some serious pace waiting for lookups.

I like to keep up the pace even when encountering new characters. I now have enough faith in Skritter's SRS that I don't even bother erasing and rewriting new words when they first show up. I just wait for the SRS to reschedule as necessary.

Middle button with my passive stylus just doesn't work well for me. If you don't want to add a preference, perhaps a shortcut key easily reachable by my left hand could work (I write right handed). That would also save me moving my pen hand away from the canvas to target the tiny magnifying glass that gets to the lookup link.

You can drag and click the links to the tab bar with the stylus rather than middle clicking. Not ideal, but maybe acceptable.

@ximeng: Thanks! Drag and drop to the new tab button in Firefox seems to work well with my setup.

I sometimes drop the link into the wrong tab if I don't keep up pressure on the screen, but that just makes me want to upgrade to a tablet with an active wacom digitizer...