Question

Is it possible to force links to open in a new window/tab using javascript by changing the target attribute when the page is loaded, but only for external links?

EDIT:

Is there a better way to do this.

Does anyone have any example I could use when writing my code?

Answer 1

Yes, it’s possible. User browser preferences will still win out but if you’d like to change the default target attribute of links on load of a page, you could call a function like this onload:

function updateLinkTargets() {
    var links = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
    for (var i=0;i<links.length;i++) {
        var thisDomain = new RegExp("^"+window.location.protocol+"//"+window.location.host);
        links[i].target = thisDomain.test(links[i]) ? "_self" : "_blank";
    }
}

Hope this helps.