# Strict target?

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/strict-target/262728>\
**Category:** web dev\
**Created:** [June 9, 2008, 2:58pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/strict-target/262728 "2008-06-09T14:58:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sekasi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5f8ce5/32.png) [@sekasi](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/sekasi)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 2:58pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/strict-target/262728/1 "2008-06-09T14:58:25Z")

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Oh god, this is frustrating. So I spent time making sure every element on my blog validated to XHTML strict when I realized the property “target” is removed from the anchor tag in strict.

I mean come on. What’s the plan behind this? Does the consortium plan to enforce “rel” tags that spawn windows?

The workaround to use a rel tag and replace it with javascript feels utterly retarded to me, it’s such a turnoff 😕 I swapped to transitional for now, but I’d be happy if anyone had a decent alternative for target \_blank in strict mode that doesn’t force you to implement a javascript loop for anchors.

Thanks 👼

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**Author:** ![simplistik](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/simplistik/32/7747_2.png) [@simplistik](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/simplistik)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 3:46pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/strict-target/262728/2 "2008-06-09T15:46:50Z")

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We have to do this a lot. So much in fact that the WYSIWYG we use in our CMS ([fckeditor](http://www.fckeditor.net)) we had to revamp the way it allows you to create links to accommodate for it, so instead of it applying target="\_blank" we have it doing rel=“external”.

On the front-end we use [jquery](http://www.jquery.com/) to execute it external links into a new window/tab, and it works quite brilliantly.

```auto

$("a[@rel='external']").click(function(){return !window.open($(this).attr("href"));});

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sekasi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5f8ce5/32.png) [@sekasi](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/sekasi)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 4:37pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/strict-target/262728/3 "2008-06-09T16:37:20Z")

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Hey, thanks both for the reply. Yes, I know about both those methods.

I’m curious however if this is something that is really intended? To have to go through javascript parsing instead of spawning a window through regular xhtml just I dunno… sounds odd to me. Whereas I realize “target” got deprecated because of marquee and frames, it just seems like such a convenient tag for anchors.

Especially when methods like jQuery add 100kb to download : )  
\*\*  
EDIT: Turns out (as simplistik called out in another thread) that there are smaller versions of Jquery to download (from 30kb and upwards)\*\*

I’m sure something will come to replace it though… Thanks for the replies 😉