Comments on: Do NOT attach “target” through script!

By: dolphinling

dolphinling — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 06:14:56 +0000

The "in memory" document is the one that the user actually sees and interacts with; it's the most important to keep valid. Especially note, for example, assistive software. It's not so much an obvious problem with target, but it's equivalent to, for example, adding a font element inside a paragraph through script. The original markup will be valid, but the resulting DOM will be invalid, and it's the resulting DOM that the assistive software looks at. It'll see the invalid, non-semantic font, and not know what to do with it.

PJ, yes, I'm entirely aware of the irony of writing this from wordpress. :-\

By: Rob Cherny

Rob Cherny — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:07:58 +0000

I have to disagree with the content of this post, dolphinling, and agree with Tantek Celik. If you dynamically insert a target attribute your original document is still perfectly valid. The only place the “invalid” document exists is at runtime, in memory, and there’s no reasoning that the dynamic document, which doesn’t even persist, matters in the world of validation. The page still renders (in standards mode no less), will continue to, and the DOM has added the behavior layer which is actually exactly the way it’s supposed to work.

By: PJ

PJ — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:05:12 +0000

It’s funny that you’re preaching this from the default WordPress theme.

It was hard, but I gave up target tags to be “Strict”.

By: zcorpan

zcorpan — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 22:33:22 +0000

Sébastien, no, the spec does not require that UAs behave differently depending on the doctype. (Formally, handling of invalid documents is undefined in HTML4.)

Nat, no, the HTML that the XSLT outputs is invalid (or, to put it in another way, the resulting DOM is invalid).

By: abba bryant

abba bryant — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:50:13 +0000

Why bother with target if you are going to use unobtrusive js to attach it?
You can simply find links with class=”new-window” and add the window.open and chrome code then cancel the default click behavior. Adding an invalid attribute the the anchor to do something that works fine another more valid way seems a waste of time. If you want to use target use target. If you can’t or don’t want to then do it the js way without adding invalid attributes to the DOM.

By: Nat

Nat — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 05:00:59 +0000

So, if you have valid XML and then use XSLT to transform it into an invalid HTML document … the XML is “invalid”?

By: Sébastien Guillon

Sébastien Guillon — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 16:38:25 +0000

(Followed the link from Tantek’s page)

The question is: Should browser accept to attach and work with a target attribute even if the document has a strict DOCTYPE? None that I know refuse to.
Can this be equated to a bug? Should browsers respect the DTD?

That would be a different web.