External links not working properly?

No, that’s definitely not true. I’m having trouble with the new links too, and I’m not using any sort of adblocker. I’ve looked a little closer at what’s going on, and I’m pretty sure the problem is due to poor network performance to the site “outboundlink.me”.

The first time you roll your mouse over any external link on a thread page, the browser sends a request to outboundlink.me (to a url like this) to report some stats. IF this request completes by the time you click, there’s no problem, but if you click before it’s done, nothing happens.

These stat-reporting requests are intermittently taking two or three seconds for me right now, so fairly frequently, there’s a two or three second window after rolling my mouse over a link where clicking it doesn’t work.

Yeah, the antiquated browser on my work computer.

Certain parts of NoScript are still on by default. One in particular is something called clickjacking, as the author doesn’t believe there should be a legitimate reason for a link that says it’s going one place to go to another. He assumes it’s a phishing site.

That said, I have NoScript, and I’ve never had a problem here. So I suspect you can tweak your NoScript settings to get it to work.

I’m using it, but I didn’t put two and two together until I saw ZipperJJ’s post.

I guess I’ll concede and add an exception to the SDMB. But I don’t like being ‘included’ in this when I am ideologically opposed to the advertising industry.

I’m having the same issue, but not all of the time. Click once, nothing happens, click again and it works as usual.

Using Google Chrome/Windows XP. Google Chrome is “Straight out of the Box”. No ad-ons of any kind.

I getting pretty much the same thing. First click on a link external to the board is almost always ignored. The second click then works.

I’m running:
Windows 7 64 bit
IE 8
No ad blockers of any kind.
Everything fully patched.

It’s not a big deal, but thought I’d add my data point.

Another, presumably related, datapoint:

I’m not getting them being ignored, but it’s subverting my browser behavior - the first time around, a link won’t open in a new tab (default behavior for something that would normally open a new window on left click, ONLY behavior that a middle-click is supposed to have), but in a new window. I’m assuming this is the same problem, because I’m getting this behavior under the same circumstances as the ignored clicks.

Chrome 4.1 on Win XP Pro SP3. Adblockers not germane, because it’s not being blocked, just not behaving like it should.

Argh. I’ll send links to these threads to DR and see what they suggest.