[Webnauts]

This is an accessibility issue.

If you markup with XHTML Strict, the "target=_blank" is not valid.

So in this case, if you want to open new windows, your code would validate this way.

As you might also know, JavaScript is not supported by all browsers and some users disable it.

There is a statistic at w3schools.com, which says that 13% of users disable JavaScript.

Therefore, when JavaScript is used, it should not be relied upon.