I would like to propose an improvement to the way Moodle handles popup windows. Instead of opening in a new browser window, resources (and other activities) could also be displayed in an embedded window (inline popup). A major advantage of embedded windows over new windows is that embedded windows do not need to make use of the standard navigation bar at the top. The resource just appears as an overlay over the main window. Simply by clicking on "close window", users will get back to the main page. Besides being nice to look at and avoiding cluttering of windows, this will make Moodle much more accessible to children and adults struggling with "going back" through the Moodle navigation instead of using the browser "back"-button.

From a technical point of view, this improvement may be realized as a third option in each resource/activity setting. You can choose between "same window", "new window" and "embedded window". No changes to the database have to be made. An open source javascript library (Greybox) can be used for handling these windows in a cross-browser compatible way. I have programmed a prototype, which demonstrates the use of these embedded windows (also see screenshots).