Let the record show that I dislike target=_blank with a vengence. Imagine trying to browse a web with every link popping open a new browser. *shiver* These are the things that keep me up at night…well, that and clowns. Especially the ones that touch you that one summer when I was 14 
Where was I going with this? Hmmm…
New-Window Links in a Standards-Compliant World [HTML & XHTML Tutorials]
Here at SitePoint, we have adopted a custom value for the rel attribute to mark links leading to other Websites. These are the very same links that we want to open in a new browser window. For these links, we set the rel attribute to external.