How can I open a link in a new window?

Question

I have a click handler for a specific link, inside that I want to do something similar to the following:

window.location = url

I need this

Answer 1

I just found an interesting solution to this issue. I was creating spans which contain information based on the return from a web service. I thought about trying to put a link around the span so that if I clicked on it, the "a" would capture the click.

But I was trying to capture the click with the span... so I thought why not do this when I created the span.

var span = $('<span id="something" data-href="'+url+'" />');

I then bound a click handler to the span which created a link based on the 'data-href' attribute:

span.click(function(e) {
    e.stopPropagation();
    var href = $(this).attr('data-href');
    var link = $('<a href="http://' + href + '" />');
    link.attr('target', '_blank');
    window.open(link.attr('href'));
});

This successfully allowed me to click on a span and open a new window with a proper url.

Answer 2

What's wrong with <a href="myurl.html" target="_blank">My Link</a>? No Javascript needed...

Answer 3

You can like:

window.open('url', 'window name', 'window settings')

jQuery:

$('a#link_id').click(function(){
  window.open('url', 'window name', 'window settings');
  return false;
});

You could also set the target to _blank actually.

Answer 4

Microsoft IE does not support a name as second argument.

window.open('url', 'window name', 'window settings');

Problem is window name. This will work:

window.open('url', '', 'window settings')

Microsoft only allows the following arguments, If using that argument at all:

• _blank
• _media
• _parent
• _search
• _self
• _top

Check this Microsoft site

Answer 5

Be aware if you want to execute AJAX requests inside the event handler function for the click event. For some reason Chrome (and maybe other browsers) will not open a new tab/window.

Answer 6

Here's how to force the target inside a click handler:

$('a#link_id').click(function() {
    $(this).attr('target', '_blank');
});