<a target="_blank"> not working

senderj · February 26th, 2013, 05:11 AM

I have a dynamic web page with an <a> where the href varies with the contents. I would like the <a> to open in a new tab instead of a new IE. I use <a href="......." target="_blank"/> to achieve this but got different results. If I use jsp to generate the html, the <a> open a new tab as I expected. But if I use servlet to dynamically generate xml and use xsl to transform it, the target="_blank" opens a new IE instead of a new tab. But when I save the xml and xsl into local folder and open them with IE, it opens new tab. Is there a better way to code the <a> so that it will open new tab all the times?

samjudson · February 26th, 2013, 06:05 AM

The output from your jsp and your servlet should be identical - i.e. if you do "View Source" in the browser they should be the same.

If they are not the same then fix that. If they are the same then it something the browser is doing - possibly to do with the relationship between the current page domain or url and the new page url.

senderj · February 27th, 2013, 02:37 AM

Sam, thanks for the reply. Looking back to my post it seems quite confusing. Allow me to rephase it:

(1). using jsp to generate html, target="_blank" in the resulting html leads to new tab, as expected.
(2). instead of jsp->html, using servlet to write xml to IE with xslt, target="_blank" in the xsl leads to new IE opened, not new tab.
(3). In 2, if I view the source in IE and save the xml together with the xsl, open the xml directly with IE, target="_blank" leads to new tab, as expected.

I don't know if there is any method to make (2) above also open new tab.

samjudson · February 27th, 2013, 04:08 AM

Without seeing the XSLT and XML I can't be sure, but this sounds like an issue with IE, and not with the XSLT. Not sure why your servlet served XML should behave differently when loaded locally, as that doesn't make much sense.

mhkay · February 27th, 2013, 06:18 AM

Let's start with a basic fact: the way IE renders an HTML document does not depend on what server-side techology you used to produce the document. So if two documents are rendered differently, they must be different. Or at the very least, they must be served with different HTTP headers. Start by looking for the differences (as Sam advised).

One possibility to explore is that the two documents have different base URIs which means they are referring to different CSS stylesheets.

One thing I notice is that you talk of your XSLT producing XML output. Why are you producing XML rather than HTML output? Is this anything to do with the problem?

samjudson · February 27th, 2013, 08:49 AM

I assumed that the servlet generated XML with an embedded XSLT (or stylesheet reference) for rendering in IE. If that's not the case then I don't know what is happening, and it needs explaining better.

senderj · February 28th, 2013, 12:28 AM

I have to apologie as I found that the problem has nothing to do with xslt, but depends on whether the page is in a frame or not. Sorry for wasting your time and appreciate your advises.

I have another question when trying to resolve my problem. Is there a way to control the <meta> generated from xslt, in particular the "charset" attribute? I tried to add <meta> into the xsl, but it generates two <meta> in the resulting html, one from xslt and one from mine.

senderj · February 28th, 2013, 12:28 AM

I have to apologie as I found that the problem has nothing to do with xslt, but depends on whether the page is in a frame or not. Sorry for wasting your time and appreciate your advises.

I have another question when trying to resolve my problem. Is there a way to control the <meta> generated from xslt, in particular the "charset" attribute? I tried to add <meta> into the xsl, but it generates two <meta> in the resulting html, one from xslt and one from mine.

mhkay · February 28th, 2013, 04:52 AM

Best to start a new thread when there is a new question.

You can control the charset in the generated meta element using the encoding property of xsl:output.