The invalid target attribute
For those of you who didn't know, the W3C has made the target attribute of the anchored hyperlink, invalid. 
Yes, therefore, we're not supposed to use it anymore.
The CSS-3 target-new property promises an alternative method for opening new windows, but full browser support for this may still be years ahead of us.
I usually do this to get around the validation error. It's probably not the best solution, but it works.
<a href="#" onclick="target='_blank';">new window</a>
Or, if you don't want to have the hassle of having to put a onclick method listener in every anchor tag, you can try this script out. It was written by Thong Nguyen; it basically adds a virtual target='_blank' attribute to any external link, by verifying that the links href does or does not match the current domain name.
To use it, just make sure you change YourdomainWithoutHttp placeholder into your actual domain name, without the http://.
function getXterlinks(){
var Xterlinks = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
// scan all anchor tags
for (var i=0; i<Xterlinks.length; i++) {
var eachLink = Xterlinks[i];
var regexp_isYourdomain=/(YourdomainWithoutHttp)+/;
var regexp_ishttp=/(http(.)*://)/;
//check if the link is valid and is external link
if((eachLink.href != null) && (eachLink.href.match(regexp_isYourdomain) == null) && eachLink.href.match(regexp_ishttp)!=null ) {
//make the target for this external link
eachLink.target ="_blank";
}
}
}
I must say, very intuitive! 
But, it seems to me though, that the web is starting to lean more and more upon JavaScript to fix all of the "broken cycles" that software developers keep throwing in our faces. Not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just saying.
Aug 09, 2007
Comments
I think its great that target is being scrapped..
Hears an article of my opinion about target plus more
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