Okay. Should I interpret your silence regarding the non-user generated part as "it works as I think it should and I'm not going to change it"?

At this point we have no plans to change the setup in this regard. As with almost everything on LQ, you can feel free to continue the discussion in this thread. If something compelling/convincing is posted, I'll certainly reconsider.

--jeremy

I find the default behavior perfectly acceptable.

Is does get irritating to accidently click on a banner and get a new page, but that's life in the big city.

If someone slams into me while driving, is it the paint manufacturers fault? No. While it maybe true that if I paint my vehicle neon pink, the other driver may have seen it, but it's their driving that caused the problem. In the same vein, if you don't know how to control your browsers behavior while clicking links, is it the authors fault? No.

Learn to use the tool correctly.

I absolutely agree: people should know how to use their tools correctly.

However, I'm not on about LQ making people use their browsers incorrectly, I'm on about LQ making opening certain links in the current pane a lot slower (in most browsers) which only making opening links in a new pane a bit faster (again in most browsers). The only ways to work around this is by changing LQ or by changing the relevant browsers.

just-clarifying-that-you're-not-addressing-my-point-'ly yours,

not Tim Peters

The entire target attribute has been removed from XHTML 1.0 Strict and XHTML 1.1. This leads me to think that there is a larger agreement somewhere that target="_blank" should not be necessary.

Here are a few links of note:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 1999

Sonneteer,

You're right about that "target=_blank" is deprecated in Strict versions of XHTML, but the reason is not that it's not a good idea to pop open a new window, but more to encourage separation of the content from activity of the page. Just like using CSS for layout and style separates presentation from content. If using XHTML other than Transitional, you can simply use Javascript like <a onclick="window.open('yoururlhere.com');" href="#"> This is the link </a> to open the new window and your code will still validate.

For max effectiveness, use unobtrusive javascript. See Jeremy Keith's DOM Scripting for more info.

domscripting.com