Website Design; Open in New or Existing Window

I'm thinking about a redesign of my wedding photography site.

I make use of slideshows that are actually held and produced through galleries on my Zenfolio site. Currently, they open inside a space that is placed within my existing page template. I could, however, create full screen versions that open in a new window. This begs two questions. Would pop-up blockers prevent that window from opening (I assume so)? And do visitors find new windows too obnoxious to want to deal with even though it ultimately makes for a nicer presentation of the images?

I use www.bigblackbag.com for my site and they rock. Fully functional and customizable site options. My sister in law is a web designer. She told me my blog needed to open in a separate window. Said it looks more professional. My website is www.sbsphotography.net if you want to see. pkus they have several samples on their site.

Personally I hate it when sites bring up their own windows or resize my existing browser. I made it that size for a reason, I don't want web sites messing with it. I'm pretty sure the web development community generally would agree that browser window size is something the user owns, not the web site.

Dave

Why not just have them in a CSS popup? This way they wont get blocked by popup blockers.

Since most people have a very short attention span when looking at things on the internet it is extremely important that you keep them on your site. Also lets face it, out of window popups and new pages to view content is annoying and the best of times.

From a usability study that I did for a company a while ago, most users lost interest in the site they were just on because:

the new page was more interesting
OR
closed down the new window because they didn't want to navigate away/thought it was spam then didnt want to stay on the page just in case it spams again
OR
closed down the website after they opened the new page, then realised there was something on the old page, but had forgotten the page name/url

Can you give the user the option to make it full-screen? I find sites that open in a new window to be pretty obnoxious, and I don't really see how it would help your site. Navigating the site and the images should be as simple as possible for the user, if you want to hold people's attention.

I know this isn't what you were asking about, but if you do redesign your site, I would 86 the text on the homepage and put an automatic slideshow that scrolls through a few of your strongest images. Also that font you use for the body text is kind of hard to read, and not super professional. Also don't forget about the favicon, which is the little icon that sits right next to the URL in the address bar. It's not a super prominent thing, but it shows attention to detail, as well as help promote your brand.

mltn wrote in post #11250800
Can you give the user the option to make it full-screen?

Thanks for the insights, everyone. I've come down on the side that everything should stay within the active window.

And there is an option to view the images full screen, but they need to hover the mouse over the image to uncover the controls and then figure them out so I suspect it doesn't happen often.