Having recently done a search on remotes I came across something of an idiosyncrasy when trying to link to Amazon.

As one probably appreciates, I generally tend to do this: i.e. anything that's blue, bold and underlined is usually a link - which should open in a new tab/window. However, this approach doesn't appear to work with Amazon, even in its most basic form . . .

• Straight link - http://www.amazon.co.uk


• Shortened link - amazon

Compare that with this link to the BBC.

• Straight link - http://www.bbc.co.uk


• Shortened link - bbc

Again, as one possibly knows, I generally use Firefox, but I've also tried this in Opera, IE, Safari and Chrome and its the same with all of them. Just wondering if anyone could shed any light on what the reason could be.

I'm not exactly sure why it's happening with Amazon, but the problem is you're using target=new. This isn't actually valid HTML; it has to be target="new" with quotes.

Interesting. I'm not sure that I've ever used "new" (I certainly haven't here) but even "new" doesn't work with Amazon . . .

• new - amazon


• "new" - amazon

After a little bit of research, however, I've found something that does . . .

• "_blank" - amazon

update

Curiouser and curiouser. I'd been browsing around several sites (had a number of tabs open) came back here, tried the top two new links and they worked! It is, however, a little hit and miss; closing all the other tabs and they stopped working. "_blank", on the other hand, works every time.

"_blank" is the "official" way to open a new window; otherwise you're technically telling it to open that link in a window with an ID of "whatever". Although that should still work... :-/