Intranet Best Practices – Targeting Internal and External Hyperlinks

26th July, 2009 - Posted by Sean R. Nicholson - No Comments

Sean R. Nicholson

When creating hyperlinks in your Intranet portal or social media application, it’s important to know when to create a link that reuses the existing browser session and when to open a new browser.

Best Practice #1 – When your hyperlink is pointing to another page within your Intranet, reuse the same browser window. The purpose of reusing the same browser is that creates a sense of continuity and flow and doesn’t leave the user with 20 different windows open after just a few minutes of browsing.

For instance, if your Intranet portal is called OurPlace and the URL to reach it is http://ourplace, then any URL that begins with http://ourplace should reuse the existing browser.

Best Practice #2 – When your hyperlink points to an external application or Web site, it is acceptable to open a new browser session. By opening the link in a new browser window, you ensure that the user can easily return to your portal, specifically to the page they were reading when they clicked the link. This also signals the user that they are exploring a link that is outside or your Intranet portal and, potentially outside your firewall.

Using the example of the OurPlace portal, if you create a link to a news story published on the local newspaper’s Web site, the best practice would be to open that link in a new browser window.

Reminder: Best practices are guidelines for common situations. There are always exceptions and it is up to you as an Intranet professional to use your best judgement as to what works best for your user experience.

Comments and feedback are always welcome!