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Form Submission Opens New Tab/Window

You probably knew that you could force a link into opening a new tab or window with the target="_blank" attribute (deprecated, but universally still supported). 

<a href="#" target="_blank">link</a>

But you can use the same exact attribute on forms to get the same result:

<form action="#" method="post" target="_blank">
    ...
</form>

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  1. Kartlos Tchavelachvili

    Nice share! so target becomes the action=”url.html”.

    Reply ↓
  2. Bradley Rosenfeld

    And I used to use java script to do this :O Thanks for sharing

    Reply ↓
  3. Bob

    A nice feature, but unfortunately, the target attribute has been deprecated.

    http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_form_target.asp

    Reply ↓
  4. dan

    so if it is deprecated, what would be the alternative to open a form in a new window?

    Reply ↓
  5. M.Pinto

    Great share.. Thanx.. :)

    Reply ↓
  6. Peter Hanley

    Unfortunately, this is not totally ‘universally supported’ – it seems like if you try to have multiple forms doing this on one page (in a data grid, for example) – submitting one form kills the others so you get nothing on click (so far confirmed on latest webkit (safari 5.1, chrome 13), but the trick still works with Firefox 6)

    So if you’re using this on a site with multiple forms, you may wish to take a look at alternatives.

    Reply ↓
  7. Peter Hanley

    Of course after being all doom & gloom I found the solution – each form must have a unique id attribute in order for this to work in Safari:

    This doesn’t work:

    
<form action="#" method="post" target="_blank">
<input type="submit">
</form>
<hr>
Then this:
<form action="#" method="post" target="_blank">
<input type="submit">
</form>

    but this does:

    
 Click this:
<form id="form1" action="#" method="post" target="_blank">
     <input type="submit">
</form>
<hr>
Then this:
<form id="form2" action="#" method="post" target="_blank">
     <input type="submit">
</form>
    Reply ↓
  8. Pilu

    Great Share.. Thnx.

    Reply ↓
  9. Pavan

    Oh , I never tried this , nice share .

    Reply ↓
  10. Jeff

    So, can someone elaborate… I need a form with a drop down box with the names of some web pages. Choosing a web page and clicking submit should open to that page (in a new tab). How is this done?

    Reply ↓
    • Jeff

      I’ve found the solution I need at stackoverflow.com. The issue got convoluted because I didn’t want to use a regular submit button, as I would have had to create new styles, but already had existing styles for an anchor tag that emulated a button. You can see it in action here: YourBeliefsMatter.com. Anyway, thanks for the post. It was helpful!!

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