External links are a pane

I decided to have a play around with my skins external links code, which uses javascript to add an onclick event to any links with class="ext", and a plugin I've had lying around for a fair smidge which does something similar for all/any external links by looking at the href for the link in question. The end result is a shiny new plugin which will add a graphic to every external link on your blog, clicking the graphic opens the link in a fancy little overlay which I stole from our photozoom plugin. I also threw in a few settings so that you can change the text that's added and add any domains that you class as internal links, although the plugin will auto generate an entry for each unique blog url on your system so you probably won't need to add any.

If you fancy having a play with this then you'll need to download 2 plugins as I've decided to separate the fancy javascript screen stuff into it's own plugin as I'm starting to use it in a couple of plugins and it's easier to have a dependency and maintain one codebase. You can download the external links plugin here ( am_externallinks.zip ) and the javascript helper plugin which it needs here ( am_jshelper.zip ), upload them both, install the js helper plugin and then install the external links plugin. That's pretty much it, now all your external links will have a crap looking arrow graphic which, when clicked, will open your link in a cool overlay. Your links will also have the class amExternalLink added to them so that you can style them as you wish. The arrow <img> tag will also have the same classname applied so you can change the graphic to suit your skin.

As always if you find any bugs or it melts your blog then just let me know

¥