[wtbob]

> 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.

Please don't break the Internet.

[douche]

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.

[MichaelApproved]

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.

[jevinskie]

Reprogramming the meat behind the keyboard is often harder than reprogramming the machine.

[douche]

With mice that don't have real middle buttons, trying to click the scroll-wheel without triggering a scroll event instead can be very trying...