[v2] links: nav & footer links (href) without target="_blank"

[LukasGentele]

🚀 Feature

Currently, I can set href for nav and footer links in docusaurus.config.js for the classic-theme but they always render with target="_blank". It would be great if that could be disabled/changed, so that the link will open in the current browser tab rather than opening a new one.

Have you read the [Contributing Guidelines on issues]

Yes

Motivation

I think it is such an essential thing that it should be part of the classic-theme. I mean I could eject the header and footer and just do it myself but that would disconnect me from the theme which seems a little overpowered for such a small change.

Pitch

There could be a config option next to href to control the target, e.g. linkTarget with a default value of _blank or an option targetBlank with default value true.

[lex111]

You can add the target property, and thereby override the default value, eg:

{
  href: 'https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus',
  label: 'GitHub',
  position: 'right',
  target: '_self',
},

[LukasGentele]

Thanks, @lex111. Any way this is possible for the navbar.logo option as well? Adding target does not seem to do anything for the logo option.

[lex111]

Is it really necessary for a logo? I mean, do you really want external link to open in the current tab when you click on the logo? FYI was recently allowed to add an external link to logo.href, in which case it will open in a new tab (as expected).
If you mean that the internal link in the logo opens in a new tab, then this is also a rather strange behavior and is not familiar to most users.
We focus on the expected UX - this is when external links open in a new tab, and all the rest in the current one.

[LukasGentele]

Got it but in my case it is expected actually and currently, it is very strange from a UX perspective. You can see what I mean here: https://devspace.sh/cli/docs/introduction

To explain what happens here: I have a website hosted on netlify and I only proxy the /docs/* routes to the docusaurus page => That means the / route is not made with docusaurus. However, using a to link, would load the wrong site using javascript. So, I need an href link but with target=_self. I actually want to make the header of the page I linked above similar to the one in the docs and remove the Website link in the nav bar but that would be even less intuitive at this point.

[lex111]

Hmm, aha, if you set navbar.logo.href as '/' then this will not work, there will be a 404 error. This is actually not a common use case. But it seems to me, we can add the ability to set the target attribute for logo url 🤔.

[LukasGentele]

Yes, exactly. I got the 404 with to:/, so I switched to using href. Having logo.target would be great. Let me know if you want a PR for this.