Open links in a new window with jQuery

Posted on April 27th, 2012 · Filed under Code Snippets, JavaScript

It is possible to open links in a new window by adding target="_blank" to the anchor tag in HTML, but if your page uses the XHTML doctype it will generate a validation error. The following snippet uses JavaScript instead to open the link in a new window, and keeps your XHTML valid.

Make sure you have jQuery loaded, then include this in your JavaScript file:

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

$('a[rel="external"]')

.click( function() {

window.open( $(this).attr('href') );

return false;

});

Now you just need to add rel="external" to any anchor tags that you want to open in a new window (e.g. <a href="somedomain.com" rel="external">some link text</a>).

(Update: Apparently using target="_blank" is valid in HTML5. But this JavaScript method will still work too).