[royroi]

on XHTML, there is no attribute "target".
what should I write instead of target="_blank" ?

Roy

[Jamie]

You should use Javascript. http://www.456bereastreet.com/archiv...n_new_windows/

[royroi]

I checked around in the web and did find solutions with JS, so there's no way without it?

[the_pm]

Nope. JS is considered the appropriate technology for opening new windows. This is considered a behavior (as opposed to a structural or stylistic element), and one which end users should be able to override. Regardless, the JS window.open function will work for the vast majority of visitors, and it is easy to create a fallback for it:

<a href="http://www.example.com" onclick="window.open('http://www.example.com'); return false;">Click me </a>

With JS available/enabled, this will open a new window. For the few remaining visitors who are unable to use JavaScript (or whose browsers would be ineffective if new windows were opened), the link will simply open in the same window.

[BigBison]

This simple script will open any link with rel='external' in a new window:

function externalLinks() {
 if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return;
 var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
 for (var i=0; i<anchors.length; i++) {
  var anchor = anchors[i];
  if (anchor.getAttribute("href") && anchor.getAttribute("rel") == "external")
    anchor.target = "_blank";
    }
}

window.onload = externalLinks;

This code needs to be in an external script, IIRC.

[BigBison]

Quoting BigBison:

This simple script will open any link with rel='external' in a new window:

My integration of microformats has led to rel='external acquaintance url' and such, a use of the rel attribute I had not anticipated when I adapted that script.

Also, on second look it appeared to be an ugly hack so I've stopped using rel='external'. The reason is, I use relative URLs so I don't need to "tag" external URLs in my markup. They're self-tagging -- the external links are the ones that start with "http", so:

function externalLinks() {
 if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return;
 var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
 for (var i=0; i<anchors.length; i++) {
  if (anchors[i].getAttribute("href").search(/^("http")/))
    anchors[i].target = "_blank";
    }
}
window.onload = externalLinks;

The loop goes through each <a> tag and checks its href attribute to see if it starts with (that's what the carat /^ indicates in a regex) the string "http", in which case target='_blank' is set.

[Corey Bryant]

Thanks BigBison for this. I have been using the other code (since I asked over a year ago). This one might come in handy - I just need to remember not to use absolute links on the menus (like I do at times).

[BigBison]

No problem. There's an improvement "coming soon" which addresses an important accessibility checkpoint by allowing the site visitor to uncheck a box labeled "External sites open in new tab or window." For now, don't forget to include a <noscript> tag somewhere in your code (I put it in my footer):

<noscript>Disabling scripts causes external links to open normally.</noscript>

You can style the <noscript> element using CSS, and view it with Javascript disabled. Who knows, you may induce someone to enable javascript by giving them no cause for alarm?