How to handle outbound links in desktop PWA?

ben

Ben Halpern

Posted on May 21, 2019

How to handle outbound links in desktop PWA?

In case you didn't know, DEV is installable as a PWA in Chrome and other browsers which support it. The new Microsoft Edge even has it as a + prompt, as such:

Functionally it works pretty well, but external links that do not have the target=_blank attribute (which is most links on DEV), open in an awkward in-app pseudobrowser with no navigation.

How should we handle this "correctly".

Should we add target=_blank to all outbound links? We could do this dynamically for PWA only. But is there a different "correct" way to do this?

Another desktop app, like Slack, would not open external links within the app. They would open in a browser. So that is probably the appropriate choice, but I'm not totally sure.

Thoughts?

💖 💪 🙅 🚩
ben
Ben Halpern

Posted on May 21, 2019

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