What's happening with the Idea open external link in new tab without interstitial?

[VPundir]

It's simple: In a module, if I add an External URL and choose to open it in a new tab, upon clicking the link, Canvas takes the student to a page with a button that they need to click to get to the link 🤦

.Makes less than no sense. What's more, an idea was posted by @tokheimc in 2017 (!!) asking Canvas to just do what it says on the tin, i.e., open the link in new tab right away, and has gathered substantial backing. But Instructure has not indicated any support for this seemingly simple fix. I can not foresee beyond 1 hour, including planning meetings etc, because the technical fix implementation is unlikely more than 5 minutes.

What can be done to implore Instructure to do this? How can this idea being supported? I understand that commenting and voting on the idea is closed?

P.S. On the Idea page, Instructure notes that "New behavior governing external tool links" was released in 2019. But I don't see this new behaviour in production, and neither does @jlubkinchavez who posted a similar idea in 2022. Perhaps there is a regression?

[GideonWilliams]

I have a recollection that there was a reason for this given somewhere in a thread.

I cannot remember if it had to do with a potential accessibility issue or something about the requisites feature.

[VPundir]

Thank you @GideonWilliams , I'll try to trawl through the topic when I have time. But seems rather weird, considering that the alternative for most people is to not open in a new tab, in which case the link opens in an embed/iframe, which is definitely worse for a multitude of reasons, including accessibility.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

One thing I recall about this (and just mentioned in another unrelated thread) is that there would be issues with next/previous buttons at the bottom of the pages if the external tool/url content just opened in a new window by itself.  Students who use that flow to travel through course content would have to resort to another method at least temporarily., which wouldn't be ideal.  So having a page with the button makes that navigation better.  I think there was a compromise suggestion of leaving the page for navigation but having the external content open automatically, but most browsers seem to interpret automatic things like that as a popup ad and block the popup entirely.

I agree that having a page with one button to click as the only content isn't visually appealing, but it may actually be the most universal option that doesn't run into tech or navigation issues (and it's probably why the functionality has remained as-is for years).  

-Chris

[GideonWilliams]

Thats what it was! Thanks Chris