How to open Safari from a WebApp in iOS 7

Question

In previous versions of iOS, <a> tags would open Mobile Safari, and you had to intercept those to instead stay inside the webapp (an HTML page that has been saved to the home screen by the user).

Starting in iOS 7, all links are staying inside the WebApp. I cannot figure out how to get it to open Safari, when I really want it to.

I've tried using window.open and a target="_blank" but neither works.

Here is a sample. https://s3.amazonaws.com/kaontest/testopen/index.html

If you save that to your home screen in iOS 6, the link opens Safari. But in iOS 7, it doesn't.

Note that this is the OPPOSITE question that everyone is usually asking ("how to NOT open Safari"). That behavior seems to be the new default, and I can't figure out how to get the old behavior back!

Answer 1

Update 10/23/13: Fixed in iOS 7.0.3. Add a target="xxx" attribute to your links to do this. Also works with mailto: and friends.

This is a bug in iOS 7.0, 7.0.1 and 7.0.2 and there's no known way to do this.

It's a regression from earlier versions of iOS, where links that open in Safari work just fine. It appears to be a part of a cluster of problems revolving around opening URLs, with no external URL schemes working (for example "mailto:" doesn't work either).

The usual suspects of working around a problem like this unfortunately don't work (for example using a form and submitting it with a target of "_new").

There's other grave issues, like alert and confirm modal dialogs not working at all.

It may help to submit these as bugs to Apple, http://bugreport.apple.com