> What is the correct way to force a link to open in a new tab, then?
What is the correct way to stalk, hunt, kill, stuff and mount the user?
Answer: there is no correct way to do something which is fundamentally incorrect.
> Unfortunately "let the user decide" is not the best answer if you want to link to something like "terms and conditions" in the middle of a sign up flow or something. If the user doesn't know how to open it in a new tab on their own, this can be extremely frustrating I'd imagine.
Abusing my browser is extremely frustrating for me. If I want to open a link (a link, see, not some horrid piece of JavaScript) in a different tab, I middle-click and get on with life. You don't need to do that for me, any more than you need to offer me a typing widget when I have a perfectly functional keyboard, or fake a link when I have a browser perfectly capable of understand the <a> tag, or check my (correct) email address with an incorrect regular expression.
On the other hand, I almost never want to have a link open in the same tab. There's nothing more frustrating than being halfway down a page, forget to hold down ctrl when I click on a link, and have all of my state on the old page blown away and replaced with the new one.
Probably this is a result of the internet already being broken, since the worst of it is in infite-scrolling type things where my confidence that I can get back to where I was originally after going back is very, very low.
If you have a middle mouse button, you can middle click a link to open it in a new tab. Of course, that's if you didn't reprogram the middle button to do something else.
What is the correct way to stalk, hunt, kill, stuff and mount the user?
Answer: there is no correct way to do something which is fundamentally incorrect.
> Unfortunately "let the user decide" is not the best answer if you want to link to something like "terms and conditions" in the middle of a sign up flow or something. If the user doesn't know how to open it in a new tab on their own, this can be extremely frustrating I'd imagine.
Abusing my browser is extremely frustrating for me. If I want to open a link (a link, see, not some horrid piece of JavaScript) in a different tab, I middle-click and get on with life. You don't need to do that for me, any more than you need to offer me a typing widget when I have a perfectly functional keyboard, or fake a link when I have a browser perfectly capable of understand the <a> tag, or check my (correct) email address with an incorrect regular expression.
Please don't break the Internet.