I disagree.
User testing at one of my old jobs showed that not using the target attribute on links to PDFs was BAD usability.
Every single user we tested on was a Windows user, and their regular browser was IE. They expected a link to a downloadable file to be separate from the web pages, every single time. When the users went to close the PDF, they closed the browser, which was never ever what they intended: they intended to close a separate window holding a PDF. When the 10th person accidentally closed their browser and looked all surprised, we had to fix the problem.
I had not anticipated this, partially because as Linux users, everyone in the dev room didn’t have browsers opening PDFs. They were opened automatically by PDF-reading programs, leaving the browser untouched. Since 90+ % of our users for our sites used Windows, target was a better option.
We briefly considered using a steaming pile of JS to do this, but thought it was bloat and little more than a cheat around the validator, who is only there to advise us on mistakes anyways. Linux users could override the link if they wanted, and some browsers would only offer a download and in those cases, opened an empty new tab, which was much less annoying than closing the whole browser would be.
There are 2 main reasons so many sites use it:
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they were told by slimy SEO guys that it was somehow “better for the googles”; either all users are so incredibly stupid that they will never ever find that site they loved to death because they clicked forward a few times, or something similar. Extensive user testing by the likes of Nielsen Group show the Back button is one of the most-used parts of the interface. People know how to scroll down, and they know how to go back a page, and they’ve known how to do both for many years now. This is a Good Thing.
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Long ago browsers did not have tabs. Like, IE6 doesn’t have tabs. The only options users had back in the day was indeed a new window if they wanted to keep the original window open somewhere. Web developers got in the habit of using target for this reason. Consequently, lots of users were trained in those early days of the web to expect new windows. If you look, many web pages, even if they are newly-built, still have old code, because devs copy stuff. I still occasionally run across fairly new sites who, in Javascript, check if the browser is IE5 or Netscape Navigator 7. I only saw this nasty old code begin to drop when devs realised jQuery could do all their coding for them, so they’d stopped copying old code.
Due to #2, where many users were trained to expect a new window, usability studies have varied somewhat: a new window is usually most confusing when it is large enough to entirely cover the old window. Users then believed they had simply clicked a normal link, and could not hit the back button to go back. This is called “breaking the Back button” and it’s one of those no-nos.
When it’s obvious that there’s another window, or when your target users are fully trained to always expect a new window in a particular circumstance (like our situation above with PDFs), then forcing a new window is less bad. Also in most modern browsers (but I don’t think IE still), many now come with a default checked in the browser configs to open “new windows” in a new tab instead.
How do most people know they are leaving a site?
Years ago, when people were actually still discussing target attributes and new windows (it’s one of those old topics where, if you want to find articles about it at places like A List Apart, you have to find their archives from like 2006 or something), there were suggestions for better usability on how to let users know where a link would take them. Wikipedia is probably a good example of the icon idea. In-site Wikipedia links look like links. Outbound Wikipedia links have a little icon next to them, warning you that they take you to another domain. I click these links with no problem: if I want to go back to the Wikipedia article, I hit the Back button.
Another brilliant idea is, state at the top of the image gallery that the images link to other sites. This idea is so brilliant that most people haven’t caught on, because I rarely see it… though that may have to do with the fact that, on the Internet, everyone is a man, and doesn’t read directions. If you are going to put target attrs on that page, then you would possibly be saving some user frustration by warning them at the top: “Clicking on the images below will open a new window or tab.” It still removed choice from them, but at least it doesn’t sneak up on them and bite. I’m kind of a big fan of a simple statement here and there explaining what will happen next, or what people should expect. Not novels-worth, but just a sentence.
Back in the day, long long ago, you could type “target blank evil” into your search engine of choice and find several pages worth of diatribe against new windows. But since most of the world has already moved on the tabs, there’s a whole generation who only know new windows as Javascript popups. The anti-target posts have dwindled as fewer people use them in the first place.