Idea: make it easier to create links that open in new windows

[peteryates]

According to the design system, links that open in new tabs/windows need to:

• have target: "_blank"
• be rel: "noreferrer noopener" (to prevent reverse tabnabbing)
• include a description that informs the user the window will open in a new window, usually (opens in new tab) or similar

Rather than having to remember all of these things every time, we could bake the functionality into the library. It could be implemented as:

• a new helper - perhaps #govuk_external_link_to
• via a keyword argument on #govuk_link_to and friends - maybe external: true

The text appended to the end should be nil by default (leaving it to the dev) but can be defaulted so it always adds the (link opens in new tab) suffix - unless supressed with external_text: nil or similar.

[cpjmcquillan]

Yeah, this is probably worthwhile.

Teaching Vacancies defined a custom helper for this a while back.

I'd imagine other teams have defined similar helpers too, so I think there is value in extracting something out into this gem.

[peteryates]

That looks perfect, thanks @cpjmcquillan!

Definitely feels like a separate method is the way to go, rather than adding more args to #govuk_link_to.

CTRL + c → CTRL + v

[frankieroberto]

I like this idea, but I think we should avoid using the word external in the helper method name or attributes, as the Design System doesn’t say to open external links in a new tab - most of the time they shouldn't be.

I think the most developer-friendly thing to do would be an additional keyword argument on the existing helper. So perhaps something like this:

<%= govuk_link_to "privacy policy", privacy_policy_path, new_tab: true %>

We could also allow a string to be set instead of a boolean, for cases where you might want to rewrite the additional text shown (eg if translating into another language):

<%= govuk_link_to "privacy policy", privacy_policy_path, new_tab: "(opens in new tab)" %>

(An empty string could be set if you really don’t want to include any additional text)

[peteryates]

Sounds like a sensible approach @frankieroberto - new_tab feels like the way to go.

• false by default
• when true it pulls the text from config (opens in new tab) by default - depends on (Make the library configurable #355)
• when a string it overrides the default text