html - target="_blank" vs. target="_new"

Question

What's the difference between <a target="_new"> and <a target="_blank"> and which should I use if I just want to open a link in a new tab/window?

Answer 1

Use "_blank"

According to the HTML5 Spec:

A valid browsing context name is any string with at least one character that does not start with a U+005F LOW LINE character. (Names starting with an underscore are reserved for special keywords.)

A valid browsing context name or keyword is any string that is either a valid browsing context name or that is an ASCII case-insensitive match for one of: _blank, _self, _parent, or _top." - Source

That means that there is no such keyword as _new in HTML5, and not in HTML4 (and consequently XHTML) either. That means, that there will be no consistent behavior whatsoever if you use this as a value for the target attribute.

Security recommendation

As Daniel and Michael have pointed out in the comments, when using target _blank pointing to an untrusted website, you should, in addition, set rel="noopener". This prevents the opening site to mess with the opener via JavaScript. See this post for more information.