Best Practice for JS - window.open() in href or in onclick?

Question

Just a question about optimization, between :

<a href="#" onClick="javascript:window.open('myUrl.com');">link-1</a>

and :

<a href="javascript:window.open('myUrlBis.com');">link-2</a>

Is one better than the other ? Or more compatible ? Thanks.

Solution 1

Best practice is to use the target attribute:

<a href="http://myUrl.com" target="_blank">link-1</a>

If that doesn't suit, a click handler (ideally not assigned via attribute) would be my take.

Solution 2

Neither one

Make it a regular link using href and target

<a id='my-link' target="_blank" href="http://myUrlBis.com">link-2</a>

If you need to do some processing of the click with JavaScript, you can use the following

document.getElementById("my-link").onclick = function(e) {
  // Do some processing here, maybe 
  window.location = this.href
  // Return false to prevent the default action if you did redirect with script
  return false;
}

Comments

[dwjohnston]

Why is this the better practise?

[T.J. Crowder]

@dwjohnston - It's semantic, so the browser (/screen reader, etc.) can indicate what's going to happen, and no JavaScript is required.