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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?
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Value. Description. _blank. Opens the linked document in a new window or tab.
It looks like target="_blank" is still alright. It is listed as a browsing context keyword in the latest HTML5 draft.
The most common reason to use `target=”_blank” is so that offsite links open in a separate tab. This allows a user to click on a reference and come back to it later without leaving the current page. It keeps visitors on your site longer and improves most of your metrics: bounce rate, conversion, pages visited.
When you link to a page on another site using the target="_blank" attribute, you can expose your site to performance and security issues: The other page may run on the same process as your page.
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.
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.
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