How to make link open in new tab or window in Meteor

Question

I haven't found anything that has worked. I've tried all of the following, to no avail:

• added the attribute target="_blank" to the <a>
• added target="someName" to the <a>
• URL starts with '/'
• URL starts with Meteor.absoluteUrl()
• URL starts with Meteor.absoluteUrl() with the "http://" removed
• URL as string literal, not returned from template helper
• <a> inside {{#constant}} region in template
• <a> not inside {{#constant}} region in template
• <a> in the body outside of any template at all
• <a> appended to the body in the browser console
• window.open([url],[target]) with all the aforementioned combinations.

In all cases, the link opens in the same tab as where it was clicked, except for the URLs that didn't start with http://, which opened an about:blank page in a new tab.

Any idea what's causing this, or how to solve it?

Answer 1

This seems like a bug. I think Meteor should ignore links with target="_blank". Maybe you could create an issue on the issue tracker

That said, I have successfully done this as a work around:

test.html

<template name="test">
  <a href="/new-window" target="_blank">Open new window</a>
</template>

test.js

Template.test.events({
  'click a[target=_blank]': function (event) {
    event.preventDefault();
    window.open(event.target.href, '_blank');
  }
});

Also, I have found that adding http:// works for external links E.g.

<a href="http://twitter.com" target="_blank">Open new window</a>

I'm not sure why these things didn't work for you. I have only tested them in Chrome, however, so maybe this is a browser issue.