Opening New Tabs & Windows, validly

So in this brave new world of XHTML 1.0 (strict), the target attribute has been deprecated. The problem with this, my fine-feathered friends, is that no one, apparently, mentioned this fact to the masses. See, while you and I, or at least I, hate it when sites auto-open new windows for me, clients love having links open new windows? And why? stickiness. They think that if their site is hovering somewhere in the background, the user is more likely to just click a few more pages, and um, well, I guess like the site more? I don’t know. And I’ve yet to find a convincing argument for why they shouldn’t do this, except for the “some people don’t like it” argument, which, if you stop to think about it, is totally useless, as the people who generally don’t like are the web- or tech-savvy, who are not the primary audience for oh, 99.9% of websites out there.

But let’s say that I still want to have valid markup – how then can I open new windows, without resorting to javascript, which has various accessibility issues? Or better yet – and this is my real question, buried deep in this post – how can I target something to a new tab? Can I even do that? Because that, mon vieux, would rock.

8 Replies to “Opening New Tabs & Windows, validly”

  1. Beyond the technical hows of the issue, I too have problems with one method being declared more “valid” or “accessible” than the other. In terms of accessibility many folks we run across — who do not have any accessibility issues in the strictest sense — as non-saavy users find that when they “get taken suddenly to a new site” in the same window they become totally confused by the change in nav etc and unable to find their way back. So for them, new windows are often the perfect solution. And I would argue that for much of the web that is an issue. But then we too exist primarily in the world of client driven design decisions.

  2. Beyond the technical hows of the issue, I too have problems with one method being declared more “valid” or “accessible” than the other. In terms of accessibility many folks we run across — who do not have any accessibility issues in the strictest sense — as non-saavy users find that when they “get taken suddenly to a new site” in the same window they become totally confused by the change in nav etc and unable to find their way back. So for them, new windows are often the perfect solution. And I would argue that for much of the web that is an issue. But then we too exist primarily in the world of client driven design decisions.

  3. Beyond the technical hows of the issue, I too have problems with one method being declared more “valid” or “accessible” than the other. In terms of accessibility many folks we run across — who do not have any accessibility issues in the strictest sense — as non-saavy users find that when they “get taken suddenly to a new site” in the same window they become totally confused by the change in nav etc and unable to find their way back. So for them, new windows are often the perfect solution. And I would argue that for much of the web that is an issue. But then we too exist primarily in the world of client driven design decisions.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: