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Not quite. Any name would open a new window unless a frame with that name already exists. This includes the case of the name “blank”. In other words, the first
by layer8 2y ago
Not quite. Any name would open a new window unless a frame with that name already exists. This includes the case of the name “blank”. In other words, the first time clicking on a link targeting a name would open a new frame (window) with that name, but the second time would load the content into the existing frame, replacing the previous content. In that scheme, there is no way to open an additional new frame each time. The reserved name “_blank” was then defined to have that semantics.
- bilekas 2y agoSo again as I understand, it's simply because a standard was decided ? > The (reserved) name “_blank” was then defined to have that semantic. I guess I was hoping for some interesting quirk with older browsers or something.
- layer8 2y agoIt was to avoid the situation of someone naming a frame “blank” without being aware of it having special semantics, or (I’m not completely clear on the history) avoiding breaking compatibility with existing use. That’s much more unlikely with a name like “_blank”. It’s common practice to separate out names with special semantics from general-use names in a syntactic way like that. There’s also “_self”, “_parent”, and “_top”. It’s an extensible scheme where HTML can add further names with special semantics in that reserved name space. I now agree that the article doesn’t make a particularly good job in explaining all of this.