Quoting usability experts Jakob Nielsen and Anna Kaley [1]:
> [Opening PDF files in new tabs] is problematic, because it assumes
> users will always do the exact same things with certain file formats,
> which isn’t always the case.
There are many examples of this situation. For example, some people
(myself included) configure their browser so it downloads PDF files
instead of opening them in the browser. In this situation, a new tab is
opened, a blank page is displayed, the file is downloaded, and then
either the tab is closed or the blank page needs to be manually closed.
The end result is really annoying.
Other situations include people who use a mobile phone browser, where
navigating through tabs is generally much harder than doing so on a
desktop browser.
But IMHO the most important point is: every browser already provides a
way to open "regular" links in a new tab, so people can choose what to
do, but if we decide to open the link in a new tab, we take control away
from them, and people who'd like to open the link in the same tab might
feel frustrated.
In these cases, the links either say "download" or include the word
"PDF", so people know in advance that they're going to download/open a
PDF file, and so we're giving them information and, by removing the
`target` attribute, we're giving them control over their browser so they
can choose what's convenient for them.
[1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/new-browser-windows-and-tabs
We were displaying documents in five places, and in five different ways.
Sometimes with the metadata in parenthesis after the title, sometimes
with the metadata below the title, sometimes without metadata, sometimes
with an icon in front of the document, and sometimes with a separate
link to download the file.
So we're now displaying the same thing everywhere. Not sure whether this
is the best solution, but at least it's consistent.
We aren't unifying the way we display a list of documents, though, since
different sections look pretty different and I'm not sure whether the
same style would look well everywhere.
Note that we're renaming the `document` HTML class in the documents
table to `document-row` so the styles for the `document` class don't
apply here.
This way it'll be easier to change them.
Note that there were two `.document-link` elements which aren't part of
a `.documents` element. We're renaming the HTML class of the link in
investments because it didn't contain links to download documents and
are slightly duplicating the CSS in the poll answer documents in order
to keep the `word-wrap` property.
