target="_blank" in XHTML Strict

[ktinkel]

I guess I haven’t been paying attention, but was shocked when our DTP Forum home page failed to validate. It came up with errors for every link to messages on the CompuServe forum because I had included target="_blank" in the URLs.

If I changed the DOCTYPE to HTML 4 Transitional (or even XHTML Transitional), there were no errors.

Turns out the W3C wants to discourage us from forcing linked URLs to show up in a new page. I have had many opinions on this topic. I can certainly understand that for someone with a smaller monitor might find it tedious.

On the other hand, I generally hate when I am swept willy-nilly to a new page when I was merely curious about some link I encountered. It is easy enough to click that window away; not always so quick or certain to navigate back to where I really wanted to stay.

I guess this is just a rant. Or maybe even only an observation. Not sure it is a problem that can or should be solved …