Link Alert 21 Nov 2006

What a great idea. When you click on a link, you're usually expecting to be taken to a new web page, so it's extremely frustrating when you find that you've unwittingly initiated the download of a 10MB PDF or accidentally opened your email client.

Link Alert is also a great example of a how a browser can take some of the strain off developers. For example, accessibility gurus tell us that we should add the phrase "(opens in a new window)" to link titles to inform users when clicking a link will open a pop-up - but there's no reason why browsers couldn't be buillt to provide such cues without developer intervention.

Come on Mozilla, make Link Alert part of the default Firefox install. Hopefully, IE, Opera, Safari et al will then follow suit and turn this feature into a global cross-browser / platform standard.

Suggested usability improvement: Tell us how big the files are too, so that we can estimate download times.

See also: Target Alert (also for Firefox).