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The Stack Exchange button links to https://stackexchange.com/

Clicking on the button opens the dropdown menu, so accessing this link is only possible by using shortcuts to open the link in a new tab, or by right clicking the button.

However, when clicking on the button when a page is still loading, the JS won't be active yet and you get redirected to https://stackexchange.com/, making you wait again before the dropdown is ready for use.
For me this happens when I misclick, or when I want to navigate from MSE to a child Meta, because there's an extra step needed, you need to navigate to the site first to get a meta link in the dropdown.

Can the link be applied after the dropdown menu is loaded?

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That would defeat the entire purpose of the link. It is linked as a fallback so that if JavaScript or one of the JavaScript files fails to load for whatever reason, it goes to the network's homepage. If JavaScript is loaded, you will never actually follow the link to the network homepage without trying to do so, because the functionality gets overridden by the drop-down menu.

If you only apply the link after it's loaded, then it will never get applied for those users who fail to load the JavaScript that applies it and you'll just have a useless button up in the corner.

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  • Wouldn't a whole lot of the site be broken when the JS fails to load?
    – Stijn
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 14:17
  • A lot of it does break. I don't believe there's a URL you can visit to have it submit a vote for you, so there's no fallback for it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't bother having a fallback for the Stack Exchange button. I'd encourage them to use more fallbacks. For example, there's really no reason why the help drop-down shouldn't link to /help as a fallback URL.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 14:22
  • OK, fair enough. It's rather annoying that the dropdown sometimes isn't ready ~500ms after the page has been rendered, but I don't know how to tackle the issue otherwise.
    – Stijn
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 14:31

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