Comments on: XHTML 1.1 Second Edition with Target Attribute

By: Marius

Marius — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:39:36 +0000

All those hacks with onclick="target='blank'" is nonsense! While your page is XHTML valid, your Javascript isn't. I mean, if some browser is able to open link in new tab with that javascript, it will definately open new tab with simple target="_blank" declaration. And if it doesn't understand the target attribute (because XHML doesn't require it to), I don't think that whole page will broke if you leave that target attribute in the "a" tag. And the solution with Javascript still won't work. All you get from all those hacks is green tick in the validator. I mean, if all those XHTMLs were created to make user experience better, these hacks just make it worse. If user doesn't have Javascript, _blank won't work for him. And I think not having Javascript (enabled) is far more often than browser without target attribute support.

Thinking about users, I'll definately still use target="_blank" attribute in my pages. And if I'd want that green tick very badly, I'd go with that DTD expanding, because it's only between your page and validator, don't get users involved into this.

By: Mark Claudius Png

Mark Claudius Png — Sat, 16 May 2009 11:28:06 +0000

There is a JavaScript workaround. Very compact when used with the Mootools framework.

By: Busy

Busy — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:08:32 +0000

This was a really good post, especially the misinformation part. (And the good news for the next edition of XHTML.)

I use javascript on new windows anyways (because I typically only use them for little ones that I want a certain size) but I always let my pages fail with the target="" error out of protest.

No more failed pages, hooray!

By: Arthur

Arthur — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 04:52:38 +0000

The target attribute isn’t just for opening new windows. Using the object tag to embed one document in another should allow for target="_parent" or "_top" to work as well.

By: Marina

Marina — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:37:08 +0000

Thanks!

On thinking about it further, Jesse's solution is a better one from the elegant standpoint, since you define the class and let the code do the work.

I was actually researching this for someone else, since I don't like to open new windows.

By: Martin Kliehm

Martin Kliehm — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 08:41:44 +0000

Marina, adding some onclick="target='_blank'" is indeed simple. Like I said, extending the DTD is a pain with some drawbacks. Jesse Skinner’s solution is slightly more complicated, but it works unobtrusive, without inline JavaScript. So it’s better maintainable. In the end it’s a political decision, it’s about your own preferences. There is no best solution.

By: Marina

Marina — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 04:56:36 +0000

I was searching for an answer to the question of whether _blank is still valid XHTML when I found this page.

After quite a bit of Googling and reading, I also found the following very simple, very elegant answer, which I tested successfully in Firefox 2.0, IE7, and Opera 9.21 and which validates at validator.w3.org as XHTML 1.0 strict and XHTML 1.1 (with the proper declarations, of course):

It was in comment #19 in the comments section of this Web page.

By: lillbra » Target-attributet och öppna länkar i nytt fönster

lillbra » Target-attributet och öppna länkar i nytt fönster — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 06:16:56 +0000

[...] Martin Kliehm Martin Kliehm presenterar ett sista alternativt sätt att öppna länkar i nytt fönster, och det är att använda sig av XHTML 1.1 och modifiera DTD:n. Genom att importera target-modulen gör man target-attributet möjligt att använda. Detta verkar krångligt och är väl inte heller så aktuellt, eftersom XHTML 1.1 ändå inte kan tolkas av Internet Explorer. [...]

By: accessBlog » Neues vom W3C...

accessBlog » Neues vom W3C... — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:00:00 +0000

[…] Martin Kliehm weist zu Recht darauf hin, dass das target-Attribut auf wundersame Weise seinen Weg zurück in das Core Set von XHTML 1.1 gefunden hat. […]