One of the weirder errors I got when I tried to validate my pages was for using the target”_blank” on my links.

What am I supposed to do? Just send people away from my site everytime there is a link!?

As it turns out the target attribute is not XHTML compliant. You just can’t use it.

So how do you get around it?

A little bit of Javascript helps.

First remove all those pesky targets from your links and replace them with rel=”external”

then create a new javascript page with this code:

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;

And finally you just need to link to this in the head of your document.

using:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”external.js”></script>

Now all your links with the rel external will open in new windows.

Thanks to these guys :

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/standards-compliant-world/