Submit a Form to a New Window
There are certain times when it's important to open a link in a new window. The short and effective way of achieving that is adding the 'target="_blank"' attribute/value to your anchor tag. But what about when you want form submission to have the same effect -- a new window? Luckily, you can do the same thing:
The XHTML
<form action="http://othersite.com" method="post" target="_blank">
<-- form fields here -->
</form>
Of course, the Target-Blank haters may not approve of this method, but it's quick and always works.
![5 HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed]()
When you say or read "HTML5", you half expect exotic dancers and unicorns to walk into the room to the tune of "I'm Sexy and I Know It." Can you blame us though? We watched the fundamental APIs stagnate for so long that a basic feature...
![Welcome to My New Office]()
My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...
![Hot Effect: MooTools Drag Opacity]()
As you should already know, the best visual features of a website are usually held within the most subtle of details. One simple trick that usually makes a big different is the use of opacity and fading. Another awesome MooTools functionality is...
![Submit Button Enabling]()
"Enabling" you ask? Yes. We all know how to disable the submit upon form submission and the reasons for doing so, but what about re-enabling the submit button after an allotted amount of time. After all, what if the user presses the "stop"...
Iv never need to do this, and actually never really thought about it, but im glad to see that, that would work if i ever needed to do it :D Cheers David.
I’m afraid that I’m a Target-Blank hater, but fortunately, not so hardcore that I refuse to use it when it’s the only thing that works. I wasn’t aware that you could do it with forms, will add that to my arsenal, thanks David!
A word of warning: target is not a valid attribute in XHTML.
So while it works, it isn’t specified in the standard anymore.
@Rexxars – that’s why I’m against it
What about making something like this and adding it to the form:
this is JQuery
Yeah, I would also do something like:
I didn’t test it at the moment, but I guess it should work ;)
Doh, no idea why, but my post didn’t work :( Anyway, I would try something like that: http://nopaste.ch/62b4538ef17e6da.html – but I didn’t test it, yet…
@All: I understand that “target” is no longer considered valid, but it’s short and effective. It also works when the user has JS disabled.
@Rich: I don’t know if it’s possible to apply that to an external window.
Maybe i wasn’t clear in my comment, but your saying something like this would not work?
@david
obviously placing the jquery code in the dom. and i removed the open and close from that form tag because it wasnt showing up in the preview.
@Rich: Yep, I know where you’re going with that, but I’m not sure if the javascript will pass the POST form information on.
excellent timing; i needed this at work today. cheers!
I know that target isnt valid anymore, but can someone educate me as to what i would use instead? and maybe i could join the darkside too?
@david gotcha. i think your right. I just tried it a couple of different ways with no results. could be something interesting to think about though. although i only tried for about 10 min..lol
Good post though.
That’s a cool trick. I’m a little bit of a fledgling at website development and tried to use target=”blank” and I was pretty damn happy to find out that all I needed was an underscore! Thanks alot David!
Try this: onsubmit=”this.target=’_blank'”
A JQuery wich tests “rel” attribute will fail in validation too, because this attribute isn’t on the list for the element “form”: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.3
Must be a way to assign the target to a class using JQuery.
Hope it helps
I want a smaller new window instead of opening a new tab,
so I’ve used this for a website, the only problem is that it doesn’t seem to work in IE 9
Javascript:
It worked for me. My WP theme was sent back as I was not using
_blank
target. Thanks for sharing.I can’t make it work with Safari on macOS.
I am submitting through javascript though:
$(someformselector).submit();