Standards are definitely the way to go if you want a well respected site that renders well, but the problem with standards is that they can restrict what you actually want to do.
In the XHTML and HTML 4.01 strict standards, the target function has been removed meaning that any link that opens in a new window is not standards compliant. This is a huge annoyance, especially if you are wanting to keep people on your site.
This article gives some good ideas: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1041/1 although its looking like javascript will be required to do it properly and be standards compliant.

One (very bad) way to do it is

One (bad) way to do this in javascript

To be honest though, it looks like this function will be phased out, but for the near future this may be the best way to go.

Rob

Where does it say this on www.w3.org ? I have looked as much as I can just these past few minutes and all I could find was this: http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html40...ml#adef-target but it doesn't mention anything else about it being deprecated or whatever in HTML 4.01 Strict or XHTML!

Look for the bit after "Index of attributes"
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html40-upda...9971218-errata


Oh it says its deprecated here: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-9712...ml#adef-target

I think the key phrase is here:

I would take that to mean that it will be defined eventually?

Sorry you probably didn't see my edit in time:

The link above this post is a 404... and I think I must be blind because I couldn't see the bit where it says it's deprecated. Even used the "Find on this page" feature with no luck....

Help? ??:

The quote, quoted the link literally. Here we try again
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-9712...ttributes.html

Yeah OK, I have one of those too!

This link is from the latest version: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/index/attributes.html

Notice it no longer has the D in there...

Your right, but going back to the original point, it is only accepted in the transitional doctype and not the strict.