Easily Create External Links Without the Target Attribute

Today's tip is extremely short and simple, and to a lot of folks may be a "Duh!" sort of tip, but I felt it was worth sharing.

I'm a big fan of keeping sites valid in XHTML 1.0 Strict. When I first started paying attention to standards, one of the things that stumped me right off the bat was the use of external links.

The Problem with target="_blank"

As I'm sure most people know, the use of the target attribute isn't considered valid. However, in order to open links in a new page, the only tool provided by HTML is the target attribute!

I had been creating external links for as long as I could remember using the following format:

<a href="http://example.com" target="_blank">External link</a> The Fix: rel="external"

The HTML When... read more

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