Quick Tip: Do you miss the target?

Opening links in a new window was once quick and easy but since the target="_blank" options on a links have died (if you didn’t knew, I’m very sorry to be the one telling you this) the only way left was the javascript way.

The click event on a link cannot be anymore traced by the onclick parameter on the a tag because all the on* events have died too (I know, it’s a massacre!) so I’ll take this example for basis.

We’ll use JQuery‘s selectors to get the links we want.

All external links

$(document).ready(function() {
	$("a[href^='http://']").click(function(ev){
		ev.preventDefault();
		window.open(this.href);
	});
});

All links from a div with ‘#id_div’ id attribute

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('div#id_div a').bind('click',function(ev) {
        ev.preventDefault();
        window.open(this.href);
    }   
    );  
});

NOTE: I’m using ev.preventDefault() rather than return false to follow JQuery pattern. Just a good practice.
NOTE: ev is just a variable name I gave. You may change it to suit your needs.

Any more ideas?