Proposal: Allow sites to target navigations at split tabs

[xuzhengyi1995]

Browsers such as Edge, Whale, Vivaldi and Arc ship split tab features, it is useful for users especially on some website like search engine result page, news feeds, document site, etc.

But currently, there is no option for web authors to target a link to open directly into a split tab. It would be great if there was a way to make <a> element and window.open capable of opening a split tab or doing navigation in existing split tab.

So we would like to propose a new target value called _split for <a> element and window.open to open split tab.

More details can be found in the explainer.

We are soliciting feedback on this proposal, suggestions are welcome.

cc: @sanketj

[hvanops]

Have you considered possibly extending this to layouts in the future? (e.g., 2 tabs vertically, 2 tabs horizontally, 2x2 grid)

[sanketj]

This is on the agenda to be discussed with the second screen WG at TPAC 2023.