Should links to external sites open in new Windows

Got a tip about a site that offers polls (without the irritating pop-ups that normally comes with a Bravenet feature) from Sherry of Beta Blogger Resources who suggested thypoll.

I have previously done a similar poll at Poll: Does making links open in new windows piss you off? on whether links opening in new windows irritates readers, but did it using the comment system for feedback, but the overall conclusion from that "poll" was that most prefer links to open in new windows.

thypoll allows one to actually embed the poll in the post, so I just thought I would do the poll again:



Note: This is a poll as well as a post about how to conduct polls, so I have a further note to add. Originally I typed

"Links in my blogs open in new windows. Does that irritates you?"

in a single line, and after embedding the poll in the post, I found that the question extent into the right sidebar, so I redid the poll and put the question as:

"Links in my blogs open in new windows.<br /> Does that irritates you?"

Now you see that the question no longer extend into the right sidebar.

Update 22 April 2007: DarkUFO commented pointing out that there is another site that offers poll. I did a new poll both as a real poll as well as to test what DarkUFO recommended and the second poll is at Is New Blogger an improvement over old classic Blogger? (click "BACK" button to get back to this page). Result of that test? I found out that Blogflux (the poll recommended by DarkUFO produced a poll where clicking on "Results" resulted in being able to see the results in the same post, unlike Thypoll, which opens the result in a new window.

Update 14 August 2007: I am trying out a new site for making poll. See Anther way to add Poll to your blog post.