Codex link in dashboard should open in a new tab like the others

[Craig Ralston]

While on the Dashboard page, the "Learn more about getting started" link to the Codex should open in a new tab. If you open the "Help" window, those external links are opening in new tabs.

Somewhat trivial for most but for a new user, once they get to the Dashboard and want to start playing around with things, the first, most obvious resource link to do so, takes them immediately off of their site. Most users will probably want to follow along with their site open. I just think this makes it a little more user friendly.

I am not sure if we should just make all the external links open in a new tab and not just the "helpful resource" type links. (For example, the planet.wordpress.org feed links).

[Craig Ralston]

Open "Learn more about getting started" link in a new tab

[SergeyBiryukov]

Related: #23432

[afercia]

From an accessibility point of view the best option would be avoiding links that open new tabs/windows but if you really need to use target=_blank you should definitely inform users that link will open a new tab/window. Users need to be informed about a change of context before it happens. Would recommend to use additional, descriptive, text on the link and hide it with screen-reader-text.

[davidakennedy]

We're going to close this, but work on this issue in another ticket. We talked about a handful of these "open new window" tickets as an accessibility team, and came to these conclusions:

• no links should open in a new window (to be consistent throughout the Admin)
• already made settings might be lost, so before following a link, the user must be warned like: “there are unsaved changes….”
• an alternative, but complex solution would be that settings are auto saved before leaving a window
• we should do a search on all links that open in a new window in the Admin

We'll comment with tickets #31363 and #31386, suggesting to close them. And continue to work on this issue further with ticket #23432.

@Craig Ralston Thanks for the bug report! If you want to continue work on this issue, head over to #23432.